As If Death Itself Was Undone
by Lang Noi
Summary: Under the Red Hood AU. An explorer of uncharted paths, a vigilante guarding the night, the will to live and fight, and a death that never was.
1. Serendipity

**A/N:** So, I've been working on this for...three months, more or less. It's essentially complete at the time of this writing, barring minor edits and some final polishing on the last chapter. I'll be posting chapters once per few days, or whenever the final edit gets done.

Anyway, this story takes place in a setting that borrows prominently from _Batman: Under the Red Hood_, as well as pulling some elements from the main DCU. Also, it features multiple perspectives, a trans-dimensional adventurer, optimism in a universe that doesn't have any, Bat-bonding, cultural translations and transitions needing work, and a Hamill tribute of a Joker.

And one averted death.

(1/5)

* * *

**Serendipity**

Miakûl, for all her professed love of duty and professionalism, was not any stranger to the idea of taking a well-deserved break from the excesses of the Council of Five. Often, she spent her time either in the wilderness of her home territory, finally taking down the wards on her cavernous abode and sleeping for a week, but occasionally she found that unfulfilling. Then she could bother her brother and his friends, but even then, there was something missing. So not long after she got her shadowy cloak from Tirana, she began to explore the wide universe on her own, and while walking the secret paths between worlds, she discovered a place that was nearly always called Earth.

It was a completely new world with completely new rules, and she spent her time trying to figure them out for herself. Miakûl had always liked puzzles, and the new world was a perfect place to start.

Since she most often ended up in region the native humans called the state of New York (though she did not know how it was to feel "New York," whatever that meant), she decided it would be best to test herself using it as a baseline.

Every time she visited, however, the people and places involved were slightly different. Sometimes she traveled around New York and there was a New York City.

At first, there were people there who worked with "extraterrestrials" and wiped the memories of other humans to keep secrets. They were amusing, and wearing her mask prevented them from wiping her memory, so she could see how they worked. They thwarted invasions and massacres many times over, and she stayed out of their way.

Another time, there were humans who chased after ghosts and poltergeists with strange devices on their backs. They were unusual, and she tried to visit their world once more to observe their tactics, but she was unable to find them again and ended up discovering that their ghost-capturing machines were rather like those that ordinary humans used to clean their homes.

Once, there had been a great lizard that had brought the island city to its knees before being killed, and she wondered if humans would be able to kill the Council of Five at some point with such weapons, if they ever developed them. Either way, she also observed the reptile's surviving offspring become a loyal, if highly destructive, companion to a band of humans, and wondered at the creativity of the natives.

Another time, the great cities of Earth had been wiped out by metallic discs in the sky. She deliberately did not visit that world again.

On yet another, she watched as most of the humans in the city were turned into gargoyles and decided that old Fae magic was not worth the time anyone seemed to invest in it.

Another version of the city was populated by many empowered beings—a man who flew in a red-and-gold metal suit, an aspect of lightning itself, and a strange man in stars and stripes who could throw a shield with deadly accuracy. There was also a tower that had not been there before, with a great A made of lights, and a strange young man in red and blue who swung through the city like a spider-monkey.

She was never quite sure what to make of all the different iterations.

Oddly, though, sometimes she would arrive in New York State to find that the city that bore its name did not exist. Instead, there were twin cities that were like light and shadow—Metropolis, home of the alien hero with the S on his chest, and Gotham, home of the Bat.

While she liked Metropolis and its shiny, wholesome look, she also strongly disliked the idea of being hilariously out of her weight class compared to even the weakest being to challenge Superman, and thus spent most of those iterations in Gotham. Her pride had closed the city to her, though she doubted that the Kryptonian would begrudge her that.

Gotham was, frankly, ugly as sin. There were thugs and goons around every street corner, crime ran rampant, and there were entire chunks of the city that were barely more than shanty-towns or free housing for the cold and homeless. Every time she arrived within the city limits, she wondered why the sky had suddenly turned red when the countryside's sky had been as blue as could be. There was smoke in the air, true, but never enough to cause that. The buildings were black and forbidding even in the heart of the city, and the winter was harsh. It was as unlike her homeland as she could make it, and yet it felt familiar in a way that New York City had not.

Then Miakûl decided that clearly Gotham was cursed, and felt much better about it.

Once she decided that Gotham was a hub of sorts, nearly all of her travels led her to the forbidding Earth city. There were times when it did not exist, and on those occasions she wondered if it could not exist at the same time as New York City. But when it was there waiting for her, she looked for differences during her free time and took as many notes as she dared, feeling oddly giddy.

Sometimes there was a Batman, a hero of sorts who opposed the city's systemic corruption and collection of costumed maniacs. If there was, there was also a Joker. She had never gotten close enough to either to be sure that the same people were always involved, but it often seemed like the case. There were often boys in red that followed the Bat, though not always (and she wondered if, on those occasions, Batman was simply younger and had not found them yet), and occasionally others appeared. Women, men, and various other vigilantes also made appearances, and Miakûl took pains to keep track of them for no other reason than the fact that she could.

The first Robin to appear usually became the Nightwing. The first Batgirl vanished, either to take up a new role or just to retire. There were others, too—she counted a total of five Robins and three Batgirls, though one of the Batgirls had also been a Robin. The second, fourth, and fifth Robins and all but the first Batgirl often made no appearances while Miakûl was around, and she wrote down theories as to why.

It did not help that some of the iterations seemed to be missing certain people entirely.

One world had only two Robins and one Batgirl total, though the second Robin had been the third in every other world. All of them except for the Batman disappeared at about the same time as the Joker, and Miakûl made a note even though there were still mysteries that needed solving.

One world had no Robins or Batgirls, and only a strange new Batman in a black costume with a red insignia. Miakûl had no idea why that was, though that iteration of Gotham seemed to have entirely different technology and she made a note anyway.

Some worlds also had different versions of the Gotham criminals, though she had no idea why.

In some, Mr. Freeze was a complete pushover who died in short order. In others, he was a desperate man looking for a cure for his ill wife. In others still, he was a petty crook whose life had been torn apart by that world's Batman.

In some, the Penguin was shorter. Was he raised by penguins, or the son of rich parents? Did he have a pet shark or a legion of literal penguins?

The Killer Croc may have had a tail in one world, and a reptilian snout in another, but Miakûl had no idea what changed that between worlds. She only knew that he always lived in the sewers and threatened to eat people.

Sometimes, Harley Quinn did not exist.

Two-Face was blond in one world and a bi-racial brunet in a different one. There were differences, too, in whether or not the Joker had a part in his scarring and subsequent madness, and he did not always have the same suit.

The Riddler was different every single time Miakûl saw him, either through his puzzles or a press release. She did like his cane, though. It was cool.

Poison Ivy did not always have total control over plants, though Miakûl preferred the worlds where she did. It made the fights more interesting.

Bane was a brainless, muscle-headed fool in some worlds, and a criminal genius who crippled the Batman in others.

Sometimes they were all in a mad-house.

Sometimes they were confined to a walled-off part of the city.

Sometimes Miakûl ran out of pages to take notes on.

Eventually, she decided that the best she could do was cross-reference the notes she _did_ have. She figured out a pattern for most of the various appearances and disappearances, as well as many of the characters who went along with them.

The Batman didn't always have a Robin, but the first Robin was the first Robin every single time he appeared at all. The others could exist or not, depending on factors she had yet to figure out, and where the first Robin appeared, the first Batgirl often followed. In one world, it went the other way around, but she had yet to see a second iteration that followed that trend. And yet sometimes various other humans would take up the masks or cowl, and she still wasn't sure what to make of them.

It was while she was contemplating her musings, which were written in the most obscure code she could rip out of the Council of Five's old records, that she walked between worlds in preparation for more data-gathering, and walked straight into a situation she ought to have avoided.

It seemed to be happening a lot more as time went on.

As a precaution, she had generally tried to find abandoned warehouses to use as entrance and exit points to the city. The Shadowcloak was hardly inconspicuous, being the kind of dark that swallowed everything, and her appearance in her normal clothes would have caused some comment. So, she walked into their worlds with an illusion at her fingertips and a lie on her tongue and hoped for the best.

Sometimes she ended up having to kill despite her preparations, and she never visited those worlds again.

Others, she found time to save lives. Those worlds were also abandoned, because she had no right to interfere any more than she had already.

Miakûl thought that she had found a world that embodied both, and was very unhappy with the idea.

She did not know the full context of the situation. She would likely never know. That was acceptable—the Council rarely elaborated on mission parameters when she took missions, either, and she was used to it. As long as she had the Mask of Wounds, the Shadowcloak, and her ring of regeneration, then she could probably survive long enough to come up with something.

She was on the ceiling of the warehouse at first, hanging from the rafters as usual. That was normal. Miakûl would have normally just descended to the floor and started the arduous process of creating a new supply cache for a new world, but the warehouse was occupied. Regardless of the people involved, that meant a new hideout would have to be found and damned if she wanted to be shoved out of a territory she had established in multiple realities.

That was a snag of titanic proportions.

Wrapping the Shadowcloak around herself, which made her appear as some kind of demon composed entirely of mobile darkness, Miakûl slipped silently to the concrete floor and went to get a closer look. Before creeping anywhere near the light, she pulled the hood up and placed the Mask of Wounds over her face. Underneath the Shadowcloak, her clothes shifted to their Earth counterparts—tactical clothes in matte black and gray, to prevent being easily spotted in the darkness.

There were wires everywhere. She did not know what any of them led to and could not even pretend to, instead silently skirting around them and hoping for the best. She rather liked this warehouse, after all. It seemed to exist in every world. It would be a shame to lose it because there were native humans and they seemed to enjoy blowing things up more than her brother did.

Miakûl heard many ugly sounds in her time exploring the paths between worlds, but she had never gotten used to hearing someone be beaten to death.

(This did not necessarily mean that she had not _done_ so, but she disliked it.)

"What hurts more? A or B? Forehand or backhand?"

Miakûl had heard that voice before. Actually, she had heard that voice many more times, and in many more worlds, than she cared to remember. The voice itself was lower in register than her brother's or her father's, but the laugh was easily as loud and high as her own. It was malicious and playful and probably would have given her brothers' friends ugly flashbacks of all stripes.

It was amazing, really, how the Joker managed to be so recognizable among all the people she had ever met and taken an instant dislike to.

Miakûl smelled blood. And it was also familiar.

There was the sound of a pained wheeze of breath. Miakûl tilted her head to catch any further sound, trying to track the interlopers by sound and ignoring the blood that seemed to permeate the air. The ends of Shadowcloak began to creep through the crates and metallic shipping containers, searching as surely as she was, but less impeded by the physical world.

Left. Right.

The Joker's voice rose from a whisper to something a little above that. She was not certain a human would have heard it.

"A little louder, lamb chop. I think you may have a collapsed lung. That always impedes the oratory."

There was the sound of someone spitting.

There was a henchman in her way. She hit him with a sleeping spell and moved on before he had so much as a moment to shout. Miakûl turned again, creeping closer and closer to the best-lit part of the building. There had never been so many old steel skeletons before. Shadowcloak sank its tendrils into the ground.

There was a meaty sort of thud.

Miakûl found them. In the end, she had chosen to vault the last set of obstacles entirely, landing in the center of the light with no more sound than the fluttering of Shadowcloak's folds. She depended on the cloak's enchantments for camouflage, normally, but it had other properties that kept it from fading away like mist in the light. She used them now, shaping the cloth to angle out like spikes.

Her head was still bowed when the Joker said, "So nice of you to join us, Batsy!"

Miakûl ignored him. It was a surefire way to annoy the clown into attacking, but she did not care.

The poor, beaten form in chains was a Robin. In fact, by the smell of the blood and the approximate description she had committed to memory, it was the second one, who so often seemed to either disappear or not exist at all. He looked rather like Miakûl had expected, given the Joker's monologue, but the expectation being fulfilled did not make her happy. She was rather far from happy.

He was very still, though he could see her, and she might have seen his eyes widen ever-so-slightly behind the traditional Robin domino mask. She said nothing.

She was clamping down on her temper as best she could, but her family had not been known for producing berserk warriors for nothing.

Then she looked up and the Joker blinked.

Batman wore a cowl. He did not seem to mind leaving his face partially exposed. There were even little bat ears on the hood. Miakûl wore a mask made from porcelain so heavily enchanted that there were kingdoms that would never be able to afford its power. It took the wounds of its owner onto itself, leaving its surface scarred and gouged like a battlefield, with only flat black lenses and a thin strip of red to denote the eyes and mouth.

Were Miakûl to venture an opinion and in a better mood (and perhaps more familiar with the culture of the native humans), she would say that the mask looked rather like what the Joker himself would create during Arts and Crafts period at Arkham Asylum, if what he made did not simply explode.

Or it might have looked like something out of a poorly done theater production.

"You're not Batsy." The Joker's expression swung from amused to a dark scowl. "No, you're a two-bit copycat, and a doll at that." Then the amusement, again. "Why don't I have my boys take you apart?"

Miakûl's voice was a low, guttural sound when she found it underneath the layers of rage. She stood up and tilted her head, like a dog intrigued by a new sound. And when she did speak, she did not bother imitating the native humans' speech patterns. She did not bother with words.

There was a muffled scream.

She had always been rather adept at curses, and curses that took the form of powerful illusions were highly entertaining. The spells that had allowed her to create lethal nightmares for any fool she caught sleeping on duty, however, had been artwork. It had been even better once she had also learned the trick to putting them to sleep in the first place, as opposed to merely waiting for an opportune moment.

"And she even knows the Bat-voice trick!" The Joker laughed. "Where did you _find_ this freak?"

This seemed to be addressed to Robin, who did not move.

Miakûl stepped forward, but seemed more to just _be_ there, where she hadn't been before. The Joker stepped back, as though confused. His opponents were normally similar to himself—well, as far as the residents of Arkham went, being completely out of their minds. The Batman was fairly similar in many ways, aside from his refusal to kill.

She had apparently missed a few of the Joker's mindless followers, however, and they tried to surround her. A few may have had unusual enhancements—chemicals, primarily—but she was already in a poor mood and her temper had been sorely tested.

She cut them down without hesitation.

There was blood, like so rarely happened when the Batman fought. He fought using methods that left criminals alive but in agony, usually sending them to the healers for months at a time. He never killed them, though there were many who deserved it.

She did not care.

No human could see her movements clearly enough to fight back.

She did not know precisely how much time had passed since she lashed out, but there were thoroughly subdued men lying on the floor by the time she finished. She had not been particularly careful with her blows in any case, and many of them were missing fingers or attempting to endure the pain of having new gashes along their limbs and throats.

Miakûl supposed that if they failed to survive her attacks when she was so blatantly holding back, that was their problem.

There was only the Joker remaining.

He almost ran. She dragged her foot back along the concrete, as though drawing a line in soft dirt, and the floor jerked as though it was a rug and a giant had just pulled it. The Joker stumbled, landing on his hands and knees, and Miakûl approached, silent as death.

The Joker began to laugh. "Oh really? Let's see how you deal with the grand finale, you mute lunatic!"

A chorus of beeps—and tiny, blinking red lights—seemed to spring into existence from nowhere. And the Joker produced something entirely new from his jacket, which Miakûl recognized as a bomb with an electronic timer. The screen for the timer was already cracked, perhaps because of her roughhousing, and that meant the screen had frozen ominously with thirty seconds remaining.

The Joker fled, but she was past caring.

She could not move the boy in his current condition. She risked killing him where the Joker attempted to, and she was not skilled enough in the healing arts to be sure if he would not be crippled for life if she miscalculated.

The ground bucked and a chunk of rock shot upwards, demolishing the fluorescent lighting fixtures overhead. With the lights out, the Shadowcloak regained full power once again, and Miakûl tore it from her shoulders. She dropped the cloth over the boy, making sure to cover his eyes, and swept her arms outward, making the ground buckle and surge up and over their heads.

They dropped out of sight, below the warehouse, and Miakûl closed the new ceiling just as the bombs went off and blasted the warehouse into nothing more than red-hot sheet metal and girders.

* * *

Jason didn't know what to think.

He hadn't been expecting much, after being caught. Maybe Bruce would have pulled off some miraculous rescue, but after the Joker armed those bombs, it seemed like the end. Actually, he'd known he was damn near doomed the instant the Joker picked up the crowbar and he'd realized that he couldn't get free, but once the bombs came into play…

It had all seemed pointless. That was supposed to be the second Robin's last stand, wasn't it? Only it really wasn't so much of a last stand as a last cringe, and all without getting his hands on the whiteface jackass who'd signed his death warrant.

And now, even though he had a shot at getting out alive, he was almost too badly hurt to move. That was probably an overstatement, actually, since while he could feel his ribs grinding against one another and his eyes were almost swollen shut and there was an unpleasant bubbling sound coming from what might have been his left lung, he was also pretty sure he could at least walk. Badly, and probably not without collapsing after a dozen feet if the throbbing in his ankle was anything to go by, but that could make the difference sometimes.

"You may open your eyes now," said the voice of his rescuer, and Jason did. He actually hadn't really realized that his eyes were closed at all, and opening them gave him a pretty big hint as to why. It was completely and utterly black.

Well, shit.

The ceiling—was there a ceiling or was this woman just fucking with him?—seemed to shake and little bits of dirt cascaded down.

There was a muffled cracking sound and suddenly the tiny—and it really was, and how the hell did they get underground so quickly?—space was lit by a pale green glow-stick. He didn't have a damned clue where she could have gotten one, but if she was anything like Bruce he supposed it just figured. For the first time, Jason actually got a decent look at his rescuer's face.

She was…probably about twenty or close to it, with Arabic features and hair that would probably be black if the lighting didn't suck. The harlequin mask was pushed up on her head like some kind of hat, and she was wearing mostly dark clothes that really looked more like tactical gear than anything. Not exactly what he'd expected from someone who'd made the Joker freeze for about a second.

"Are your injuries critical?" the woman asked, looking up at the ceiling. She ran her fingers along the concrete, apparently looking for some kind of weakness.

Jason blinked at her. They were going to die of suffocation in less than a minute in this hole and she was worried about him _bleeding out_? Then he nodded, because she stared at him until she got an answer.

She sighed and asked, "Does the Batman have a tracker on you?"

Jason had no idea, but it made sense. He nodded anyway.

"Someone is directly above us. It may be him." She began to trace her fingers in long, looping trails on the concrete. "He should have those throwing weapons, yes?"

She didn't wait for an answer, and Jason was sure he was hallucinating his death or _something_ because the world seemed to do a back-flip. The ground was bubbling and creaking and doing all kinds of weird shit and the next thing he knew, the weird little air pocket had become a six-by-five-by-six sort of cell thing. There was even actual daylight coming in through a couple of cracks.

A batarang dropped to the floor.

While Jason was still wondering how the fuck that had happened—they'd just been what felt like ten feet underground, what the hell—the woman pushed upward on the layer of stone and concrete and steel, and then they were standing in what seemed like an open pit, because all of the sheet metal roofing had been shoved aside.

And, since this was so obviously a delusion that there had to be a happy ending, Bruce was standing right there as the pit sort of shifted upward like an elevator, and that made _absolutely no sense_.

When Bruce actually hugged him, he was pretty sure something in his brain broke, to go along with his ribs.

But his brain seemed to be okay with that, because that was about when he passed out.

* * *

Miakûl had a fairly decent sense of timing, having inherited at least some of her father's sense of humor. She understood most dramatic conventions, and exactly how many would actually work in real life. She also understood the Joker through several disjointed years worth of observations, across multiple worlds and many unhappy scenarios. She had taken copious notes.

She had no doubt that the Joker had specifically arranged for Batman to be _just_ far enough away that he would fail to rescue his charge by the smallest of margins. It suited the clown and what she thought he was planning, and it was only by coincidence that Miakûl had been close enough to do anything at all.

The mystery of the disappearing Robin was, unfortunately, solved.

With that in mind, she kept her hand on the earth above their heads and waited for signs of human movement.

And, perfectly in keeping with what she expected of both the Joker and the Bat, there was the impression of human movement not long after the feeling of heat and pressure. The building had been flattened like a house of cards, but clearly it was cold enough outside that the heat had almost immediately dispersed and made it possible to actually traverse the wreckage.

When the Batman walked closer, nearly over their underground air pocket, Miakûl sent a spur of rock upward to keep him from moving onward. She supposed that he would think Clayface was involved somehow, but she started to use her earth magic to change the game.

_Are you the Bat?_

There was a pause and a scratching sensation.

_Yes_

She frowned minutely.

_Prove it. Place a throwing weapon [here]._

There was the sensation of something making a clanging sound.

She drew the folds of earth up and over the offering, testing it for weaknesses she was certain existed in all worlds with a Batman.

It was real.

_I have found your Robin. _

Then she shifted the earth overhead, pushing it to the sides and underneath their little hiding place. The ground rumbled and churned as she shifted the weight of the surrounding dirt around.

_Take him._

Then, once they were close to the surface, she sent another spur of rock upward and knocked the debris aside without fanfare. Then she opened the earth above them, creating a structure not unlike a sinkhole, and continued to bring more earth underneath them to boost them upward. Looking up, she could see the Bat looking down, and shrugged inwardly. She did not want to have to explain the entire situation, mostly because of a lack of words that would suffice, but it seemed inevitable.

Miakûl walked away as soon as the ground had once again leveled out, taking her cloak as she did so. She slipped the Mask of Wounds back over her face, then focused on examining the wreckage. If the Bat chose to hug the Robin he had nearly lost, then that was not really her business.

"Who are you?" Batman asked, standing and holding the unconscious Robin in his arms. Miakûl, who had tucked the Shadowcloak back around her shoulders and begun testing its powers again, shrugged.

In retrospect, she had never been in such close proximity to any of the costumed humans in any of the iterations of Earth. That could cause problems.

"Who are you?" Batman repeated in a growl.

"Someone whose fate should not concern you." Miakûl responded, looking down at the still-burning shell of a warehouse that had once been a landmark, for her. "Look after your own."

Speaking of…

She pulled a ring off her left hand and held it out. "This will speed his recovery."

Batman, with his arms full, still managed to take the ring from her. She hated to see it go, but it was not as though she needed its powers at the moment. It just happened to represent the investment of more than a little time, effort, money, and murder, and she rather liked its tendency to regenerate missing parts for her. But none of those properties would be necessary in the next few days.

"It is a ring of regeneration." Miakûl explained, "And though I will want it returned, there is no particular need for haste. See that he recovers, and then we shall speak again."

Batman frowned, but his primary concern was his charge and she was a mere afterthought. That would send him away, because when it came down to it, she was less of a problem than his rogues and frankly didn't care enough to start causing her people's brand of trouble (which would have involved burning Gotham down to stave off the sickness). She had a very specific target.

Which she was not going to tell him about.

There would be a _reckoning_.

Miakûl stepped into the shadows and, once again, walked the lines between worlds.


	2. Recovery

**A/N:** And now you get to see what the rest of the Bat-family's been up to. Barbara and Alfred unfortunately get the short end of the screentime-stick, here, but they'll have their day. Also, Barbara hasn't become Oracle yet at this point in the timeline, though it'll come up later.

And as an aside, the title of this story is from "Blinding" by Florence and the Machine.

(2/5)

* * *

**Recovery**

Bruce had spent an hour on a wild goose chase. There had been indications that the Joker had set up a new base of operations in a toy factory in downtown Gotham, and that people had been disappearing after finding a Joker-themed calling card. He had broken up the hideout and given the Gotham police enough of an edge to arrest a majority of the Joker's gang, and that was when the biometric monitor in Jason's suit had started screaming into his ear.

Alfred called then, sounding strained in a way he hadn't since Killer Croc and saying, "Sir, Master Jason's vitals—"

Bruce ignored it and set the suit to scan for the signal, because he knew the situation was dire and if he let himself dwell on the exact diagnosis, he'd lose his edge. Someone was _hurting_ Jason. He needed to keep together enough to hurt them back.

He hadn't seen the Joker at his alleged hideout.

The signal led him to an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of Gotham. He gunned the motorcycle's engine, speeding past motorists too occupied with their own lives to get out of his way, and felt the seconds tick down. Jason's heartbeat had become a dull throb in his cowl, alternately slowing and jolting faster when he was sure the blows were falling.

Then the monitors started screaming again, and Alfred called again, "Sir, Master Jason has a punctured lung."

"I know, Alfred." Bruce whispered, and the curve of the road finally brought him to the abandoned warehouse.

He ditched the motorcycle once it went up and over the embankment, and ran toward the front door. There had to be one—

**_BOOM._**

The warehouse was engulfed by a fireball, and Bruce was blown backwards and into the snow. It was only years of training that had gotten him to raise his cape in time, trying to stave off the inevitable rush of pressurized air and heat, and he still landed badly. But that didn't matter, because every scanner he had said that Jason had been in there.

_Jason!_

It took a moment for his hearing to come back, but when it did, he was nearly brought to his knees by sheer relief. Jason's heart was still beating away, and only fractionally slower than before. If he'd caught the brunt of the explosion, there would have been nothing but static.

"Jason!" Bruce shouted, making his way to the wreckage. The first thing he touched—metal, of course it was metal—nearly burned his hand through the gloves, and he levered it aside with a piece of rebar. "Answer me!"

Then a chunk of rock shot upwards like some kind of missile and Bruce stopped on one of the few bare patches of ground. It looked like it had been the epicenter of the explosion, simply going by the scorch marks.

Then the ground bubbled. After a moment, it resolved itself into words that carved themselves an inch deep into the concrete.

_Are you the Bat?_

Immediately, he wracked his brain for anyone he knew that could do that. It was possible he was being led into yet another trap, that someone had scrambled the signal and that Jason was somehow being held somewhere else, but still stubbornly alive.

He pulled out a batarang and scratched his answer into the concrete, just in case there was any chance he was wrong.

He didn't want to think about the possibility of being _right_.

_Yes_

The words disappeared and reformed into another message.

_Prove it. Place a throwing weapon [here]._

He laid the batarang flat over the word "here."

The ground seemed to swallow it and Bruce pulled a canister of explosive gel from his belt, just in case, but a new message appeared with the sound of stone grinding on stone.

_I have found your Robin._

Bruce felt his heart skip a beat. It was enough of a shock that he nearly didn't process the next message.

_Take him._

Then the earth split open and then Jason was there, and _alive_, and the black-clad figure that must have saved him was walking away to look at the wreckage. Jason was badly injured—he could remember Alfred mentioning the punctured lung and his suit's biometrics were screaming still, but he was alive and that meant that everything was a long way closer to being okay.

He almost didn't remember what the woman said, but he now had a ring that was probably magic if she was so certain it would help.

Then it was time to go home.

* * *

_Twelve hours later_…

Miakûl was in Gotham city's central park, feeding pigeons. She had bought bread from the surplus bakery and, really, it wasn't as though she had anything better to do for a while. The Joker had likely gone to ground until nightfall, and she wasn't interested in stale bread. What she really wanted to eat was lobster, but that could wait until she had enough patience to go and find an actual restaurant.

She unwrapped the loaf and ripped a piece into fourths before tossing it to the birds. They proceeded to brawl over it before being beaten back by a crow.

_Fifteen minutes later…_

Jason Todd woke up for the first time since his rescue and immediately pulled the oxygen mask off his face and the heart monitoring lines out of his hands. Everything hurt and he was so tired—_drugged_—that he stumbled at first, then tried for the door.

_Ten seconds later_…

Bruce Wayne nearly had a heart attack when the EKG monitoring Jason reported a completely flat line, but then he rushed into the room and found his charge already trying to fight his way out of what he thought was an unfamiliar hospital room. He caught Jason when he stumbled, overcome by morphine and his injuries, and whispered assurances until the boy relaxed.

He couldn't help but think that the woman's ring had helped—mainly because Jason was breathing on his own after his lung and ribs knit themselves back together. Otherwise he wouldn't have even gotten that far.

_Five minutes later_…

Miakûl walked out of the park, _sans_ bread, and walked to the corner. Waiting for the light, she shoved her hands into her coat pockets to conserve heat and cursed whoever had decided that Gotham needed to see three feet of snow per year. She was used to the idea of New York getting snow all winter, but that did not mean she had to like it.

And she still needed to get her ring back before she left, preferably before she lost a toe to frostbite.

But before then, she also needed to figure out where the Joker had slunk off to, and pull him out by the scruff of his neck. Until that moment, however, she still had time to think of an appropriate penance for his crimes.

All of the ones she had come up with so far involved feeding him to a crocodile feet-first, which was not terribly practical given the lack of such creatures in Gotham City.

Perhaps Killer Croc still lived…

_Two hours later…_

Jason has slept fitfully once Bruce got him back into bed, under morphine and exhaustion, and opened his eyes blearily to Gotham's early winter sunset, which turned the sky a brilliant red-gold. For a moment, he just stared, looking out past the mess of medical equipment Bruce and Alfred had set up in his room and watching a crow fly by.

Fourteen hours ago, he'd been sure he'd never see it again.

After a moment, he looked over at his other side and spotted an extra blanket and pillow, piled up next to his left arm. Someone—maybe Bruce, if he was feeling stupidly optimistic—had been waiting for him to wake up. And how hadn't he noticed those before, anyway? It didn't seem like he'd been out _too_ long…

There were little wires stuck to his head. Jason blinked and tried to figure out which machine they went to—had to be for monitoring brain waves, right?—and winced. Not even morphine could dull everything. Still, he was feeling better than he had before, which didn't make sense.

After a moment, he lifted his right hand to see if he still could. While the requisite wires were running under the skin—of course they were, he'd seen people in hospitals before—he hadn't expected to find a ring on his index finger. It was sort of silvery, and heavily inscribed, but he couldn't make out exactly what it said.

He was saved from having to strain his eyes anymore by the sound of the door opening.

And somehow, the person he saw there wasn't either Bruce or Alfred. The person was significantly younger, with shoulder-length black hair and blue eyes. He took one look at Jason, who still had his hand in the air like a moron, and Jason saw his eyes go wide like golf balls. Then he stuck his head back out into the hallway and shouted for Bruce again.

Jason found himself wondering why the fuck Dick was suddenly back in the picture, since he had his own thing being Nightwing over in Blüdhaven. Shortly after, he wondered why Dick was _hugging_ him, because seriously, he wasn't four or something and he still felt like some kind of giant bruise, and Dick needed to just get _off_.

He didn't actually say any of that, though, which was partially because he couldn't breathe and partially because he didn't mind that much. Better than being hit by a fucking crowbar for the thirtieth time.

"Jay, Jay, you're all right!" It wasn't the first time he'd been hugged by Dick, but it was the first time he felt like he was stuck in a vice.

"I'm alive." Jason said, and was shocked at how rough his voice sounded. "Not sure about 'all right,' but close enough?"

Dick really didn't know when to let go.

After a while, he sort of had to just give in, since he couldn't move his arms anyway. He let his chin drop over Dick's shoulder, a total surrender if he ever gave one, and Dick gave a weird little hiccup-like laugh.

Well, if _Dick_ was crying, it wasn't like Jason had anything to hide either.

After a second or two, Alfred walked in, followed by Barbara in her wheelchair, and even Bruce. There wasn't really a group hug—Dick wouldn't let go long enough, and he was taking up all the room anyway—but between Alfred, Barbara, and Bruce, they gave it a pretty good shot. It only ended when Jason winced, since he was still sore, and everyone ended up being shoved out of the room.

Well, except Dick and Bruce. They were the ones doing the shoving.

And, all right, so maybe Alfred sort of just steered Barbara away and Dick clung like some kind of burr when Bruce gave him a Look, but that was all technicalities.

"I'm sorry." Jason said immediately, even though Bruce hadn't turned the Look on him yet. Dick was immune, probably because he'd been on the receiving end way too many times, but Jason still felt like curling up in a corner sometimes when Bruce used it. Though maybe not as much, anymore. "I should have waited for—for some kind of backup."

Bruce stopped trying to stare Dick into submission and turned his attention to Jason. Dick, for his part, just sort of sat on the edge of the bed, but he squeezed Jason's left hand reassuringly.

"What you did was reckless," Bruce began, not slipping into his Batman voice just yet, "but I'm just glad you're still with us."

And he ruffled Jason's hair fondly. Jason winced and Bruce stopped, concerned, and Jason reached up with his free hand to touch his scalp. There was another twinge of pain. Another thing he'd have to thank the Joker for. With his fist.

"That's…probably not going to grow back normal." Dick said, pulling Jason's hand back to take a look at the split. He tilted his head. "If it grows back, it's probably going to be white."

"I can deal with a little hair dye." Jason said, looking back at Bruce.

"For now, all you're going to be dealing with is getting better." Bruce said seriously.

"And stitches." Dick added.

Jason considered that. "Fine."

Dick laughed a bit, squeezing his shoulder, and left not long after to do something. He wasn't all that sure. Alfred hovered, like always, and Barbara seemed to be setting up for all of her Oracle work in the lounge or something. But Bruce didn't leave.

"You're going on patrol later, right?" Jason asked Bruce after a while, even though what he really wanted to say was something more like, "Please stay."

Bruce seemed to have gotten the subtext, though. "Dick agreed to take over until midnight. He's also going to be keeping an eye out for the Joker and the woman who rescued you. We'll track them down."

Jason relaxed minutely. But just to be sure, he asked, "What are you going to do?"

"I'm staying, Jason. Don't worry about it." Bruce said. Jason blinked. "And Dick will be back soon."

Jason thought that the criminals of Gotham would be facing every bit of rage Nightwing and Batman could muster, in a single night. They deserved it.

Jason fell asleep again, only this time he knew it was Bruce who'd been watching over him. Oddly, it made him feel safer to realize that, with or without Batman.

* * *

Not long afterward, the Batsignal was broken by a throwing knife with a note attached.

_Batman,_

_Please return my ring at your earliest convenience. _

_M._

_P.S.: Follow the birds._

* * *

_Three minutes._

_"Speak up, Bird-Boy, it's awful hard to hear you scream."_

_Fifty-four seconds._

_"No one's coming for the replacement."_

_Five._

_Four. _

_Three._

_ Two._

_No one did. _

_He was trapped and staring down a set of red numbers and God, everything hurt so badly and he still didn't want to die. He slumped against the door—locked, of course it was fucking locked, no loose ends for the Joker—and let out a slow breath. _

_One._

_He closed his eyes._

_White. Then nothing._

Jason woke in a cold sweat. The steady beep had carried over from his dream—only now, he could see the heart monitor thing going at it, and it was telling him he was panicking. He was pretty sure 120/80 was _supposed_ to be the normal number. Maybe. He wasn't a morning person anyway.

Still, he took a deep breath and wiped his forehead off on his sleeve. Then he just draped that arm over his eyes, since the damn sun was coming up just on the other side of the house, and that meant it was going to be daytime soon enough. He hated mornings just as much as every other member of his family.

He took another deep breath, trying to marshal his thoughts into some kind of working order.

Well, it looked like he was _afraid_ of that fucking clown. It wasn't like before, where he'd just get the normal pre-fight jitters and then he'd be all right with just getting on with things. He didn't have nightmares about normal fights, anyway, and he was pretty sure if he did they'd be a lot less realistic. Like…like if the Scarecrow suddenly decided to actually learn how to fight and took out Bruce first with an army of rats wielding switchblades. Something stupid like that.

That damn nightmare had been just a little too close for comfort. If it hadn't been for that fucking crazy woman in that warehouse, he'd be dead. Maybe even _unrecognizably_ dead, like in little chunks of Boy Wonder all over the damn snow, no matter what the Kevlar in his suit said. Or maybe the explosion could have killed Bruce, too, since he'd gotten to the site so soon after the bombs went off that he _had_ to be in the area.

Or maybe it might have killed Bruce, and just Bruce, because hadn't that crazy woman gotten him like ten feet under the explosion anyway? If Bruce was running in like an idiot—like Jason did _all the fucking time_, wow, was he stupid—then it was a close call all around. And without Batman, that would have been the end of it. Maybe Dick would step up or something, and get his ass killed just like his old man and his brother.

Maybe that would just be it for Gotham, because Batman was the only thing that had ever held the Joker back.

Sometimes, Jason hated having an active imagination.

Sure, the Joker had gotten pretty close to killing him—closer than anyone not in Croc or Ivy's bracket, anyway—and since waking up afterward he was pretty shaken up, but he'd also been pretty sure he would get over it. He would stop looking around for Dick and his random hug attacks, or Bruce being there when he woke up. Things would get back to normal eventually.

No such luck. Once the nightmares started, he'd known it wasn't going to be that easy.

Fucking hell.

As though on cue, Dick opened the door and poked his head in. The former Boy Wonder rubbed at his left eye and whispered, "Jay? You up again?" Jason remembered belatedly that Dick's room—well, Robin's room, back when he'd actually been a permanent resident of the manor—was right next to his.

That did _not_ explain his freakish ability to sense when Jason's thoughts were going in circles that looped around his neck like a noose. But Jason decided he didn't really care.

"Yeah, I'm awake." Jason grumbled, forcing himself to sit up. He was still sore, but not much worse than if he'd been training with Bruce like normal. It made absolutely no fucking sense no matter which way he turned that thought—(he'd been beaten mostly to death less than a week ago, _that was_ _not_ _how it fucking worked_)—but he let it go.

Well, granted, his ribs still felt about as bad as they had yesterday, but he figured that even miraculous healing had its limits. Somehow.

Dick sat on the bed next to him. "You all right?"

"I'm just gonna pretend you didn't seriously ask that." Jason muttered. Dick looked hurt for maybe about a second, so Jason added, "I'm fine."

Dick gave him a skeptical look.

"I'm not dead." Jason clarified. The light was bad enough that he might have thought Dick would have missed the way his whole frame shook, but Dick wasn't stupid and he'd been practically nocturnal for most of his life at this point. "And besides not being dead—which is great, by the way—I think I might actually be able to walk tomorrow. I'm calling it good."

"Yeah, well, I wasn't really asking about that." Dick said, and pulled Jason into another one of his signature crushing bear hugs just before he went to pieces.

It was kind of funny, really, that Dick was playing the big brother after being in Blüdhaven for most of Jason's career as Robin, and that he was pretty good at it despite not really getting any practice. Jason thought distantly that maybe Dick was just built for it or something, complete with a psychic link to tell when Jason was freaking out.

"You have _no_ idea how close we were to panicking when we thought we lost you." Dick whispered fiercely. Jason blinked, trying to process that thought and avoid getting squashed like a bug at the same time. After a while, it usually just got easier to let Dick do whatever the hell he wanted—mostly when it came to hugs, considering that Bruce and Alfred weren't exactly much for physical contact—and being hugged didn't actually hurt. "We were _terrified_."

And anyway, that had a lot of weight in it.

"I wasn't." Jason said quietly.

Dick let go, staring at him.

Jason shifted uncomfortably, rubbing his arm to get the feeling back into it.

Jesus, sometimes he forgot Dick was a lifelong acrobat. He wasn't as big as Bruce—Bruce was like thirty-something, so it kind of made sense—but he had a grip like a trash compactor. And he also sometimes forgot that Dick was actually capable of human emotion other than constant, idiotic cheerfulness (which might have been because he almost never acted like Bruce).

"I wasn't thinking about how scared I was or wasn't." Jason said after a moment. "Mostly, I remember being _angry_."

Sure, he was afraid of the clown _now_, but at the time he'd been busy thinking of ways to pay him back for the beating. And it was _easy_ to shove fear aside for anger—he'd been doing it pretty much his whole life, anyway, and being pissed off was more likely to actually get him out of a fight alive.

A little, anyway.

"I kept thinking, '_I can get out of this_,'" he explained in a low voice, staring down at where his hands had curled into fists against the sheets. "Even if that woman hadn't showed up when she did, I would have tried to get out. And get him back for everything.

"Only I guess if she hadn't, Bruce'd be burying me about now." Funny, his hands hadn't been shaking a moment ago. Being squished by Dick ought to have fixed that. "So…so I dreamed nobody got there in time to help. That…that Bruce forgot or, or something fucking stupid like that. And then I guess I died."

"Jay, look at me." Dick said, and Jason kept his gaze fixed firmly downward.

"And the worst part…the worst part was waking up, and thinking, '_What if he got there when the blast went off_?'" Jason went on stubbornly. "And then thinking, since I was all safe and sound under fifteen feet of rock, that'd mean _he'd_ die because _I_ was enough of a fucking idiot to get caught by the fucking clown!"

"Jay, please, just _listen_ for a minute." Dick insisted, and again Jason was being pulled against Dick's chest and crushed. One of these days, he was going to come up with a palm-sized spray-bottle for these occasions. He wasn't a teddy bear, dammit. "No one—_absolutely no one_—blames you for what happened. The Joker is a _monster_. If you think anyone here would want to…to trade your life for theirs, we all need to talk. As a family. Because we've let you down just by letting you think that."

Jason gave a harsh bark of a laugh. "Hate to break it to you, Dick, but I can kinda think whatever I want."

"That's not what I meant and you know it." Dick said.

Jason stopped laughing. It was hollow anyway. "Yeah, I know."

"Then just shut up and get used to being cared about." Dick said.

"Maybe it'd be easier if you weren't trying to squeeze me in half." Jason grumbled, but he didn't fight it.

Still, eventually it was apparently either get a cramp or let go. But Dick kept his hands on Jason's shoulders, even though he let his successor breathe again. He was giving Jason Nightwing's very own version of the Batman-Trademark-I-Don't-Believe-A-Single-Word-You're-Saying look, combined with one of concern. "Do you want me to get Bruce?"

Ouch, bringing out the big guns already? Dick had the older brother thing down _pat_. Or mama bird, whichever worked.

Actually, Jason was leaning toward the latter.

Still, if he kept having mini-breakdowns over a fucking _nightmare_, maybe that was okay. Not great, but then there wasn't a whole lot that was. Actually taking down bad guys? Great. Getting talked through a nightmare by his adopted dad at age sixteen? Not so much. But probably necessary, if his two freak-out sessions since Dick had decided to stop by were any indication.

Jason put up a token resistance anyway. "Will you stop hovering? I don't remember calling for Mama Nightwing."

Dick stuck his tongue out at him—which confirmed Jason's theory that the man wasn't going to grow up, ever—and beat a hasty retreat.

Jason gave an exasperated sort of laugh and shook his head.

Really, this place, these people…sometimes he was sure there wasn't enough good in the world to fill a thimble, and then he came home.

* * *

Miakûl had spent the week poking around what she viewed as the traditional haunts of the Gotham City villains. From the Iceberg Lounge to every abandoned toy or candy factory in the city, from the sewer system's main junctions to Wayne Aerospace, she found neither hide nor hair of the Joker, which struck her as very strange indeed. The Joker was not terribly subtle when he has just had a grand success, and the alleged murder of the younger Robin ought to have had the clown and his gang out in force.

Then again, given that she had seen the Blüdhaven-based Nightwing patrol every night, often in concert with the Bat, the Joker may have seen the writing on the wall. The pair had sent most of the smaller-time criminals to ground, leaving, at most, the Arkham-worthy repeat offenders. But even among them, the more white-collar among their ranks had nonetheless been on relatively good behavior.

That was basically only Two-Face and the Penguin, though. Mr. Freeze had never cared enough to cause trouble unless a cure for his wife was in the balance. Poison Ivy was probably hibernating, given the weather. The Black Mask was likely focusing on illegal kryptonite shipments or something similar, where Hush was probably cooling his heels in Arkham (if he even existed here), and she distinctly remembered seeing the Riddler in a police vehicle. The Scarecrow was probably slinking away unnoticed, where Bane was likely in Arkham or Blackgate, depending on what they had sentenced him for most recently (unless he was not yet a criminal, which was also possible). Clayface was missing, but she was not terribly worried about him, and Killer Croc was apparently under heavy guard at Arkham, which was a situation she did not expect to last.

Miakûl wondered where Ra's al Ghul had gone, however. While she knew that he was the leader of the League of Assassins and his daughter was probably in the country somewhere, she was also finding odd hints that the Assassins were in town.

Mostly ninjas, granted, but they were hints nonetheless.

But, having exhausted what passed for contacts and sources of information, she supposed that it was probably time to both leave Gotham and head to Metropolis, or time to face the Bat. So she sent her message, bought more bread, and found a convenient rooftop. After that, it was a waiting game, and she had plenty of crows eager to keep her entertained.

She had to wonder, though, if Robin would be able to attend the meeting. The ring of regeneration worked more efficiently the more skilled its wearer was, using old healing as a guideline and speeding human recovery to a rate comparable to that of a proper monster. He was likely capable of independent movement, if not already back to his peak, after a week's time. Though perhaps that was her internal optimist, and he was too badly hurt even for such a powerful item.

She scoffed to herself. _Unlikely_. If he did not show, either he would be waiting in the wings and observing, or Batman would have forbidden it to spare his charge any more danger. She did not intend to cause the boy any harm, and Batman likely knew that, but he would not be the Bat if he did not take precautions. And if he did not, well, then she had a problem. Possibly many problems.

But if what she had observed of the second Robin was true in this world as well, then he would likely try to attend regardless of whether his mentor approved or not.

_Oh, to be young and convinced of your own invulnerability_. Perhaps not so much anymore, though. Near-death experiences tended to do that to a person's mind. And while she did not plan to be around for the inevitable explosion that would be building for the next few months until they got that boy a mind-healer, there was still a possibility that she would see the changes even so soon after his encounter with the Joker.

She needed her ring back first, as much for her peace of mind as for its practical value. All else would follow. And if Batman did not return it immediately, there were still options available.

She was not like her brother. If necessary, she could muster the patience for a very long game indeed.

* * *

"You're not going, Jason, and that's final." Bruce said, pulling the cowl up over his head and slipping into Batman's voice. They—meaning Bruce and Dick—were already halfway suited up by the time Jason made it to the cave, having not been told beforehand that they were actually going to meet the woman who rescued him and broke the Batsignal. Considering that he felt more or less back to normal, with minimal lingering soreness and the kind of stiffness that happened because he'd been stuck in his room for a week, it struck him as pointlessly unfair.

Was he seriously being _punished_ for nearly dying? "Why not?" Jason demanded, nonetheless heading for the locker where he'd left his Robin uniform. It wasn't like he was still limping or anything.

He knew he was recovering way faster than anyone not named Superman should have been able to, and he figured Bruce knew at least a bit about why, but damned if he was going to ask that.

Bruce's hand clamped onto Jason's shoulder and nearly knocked him over. _Great_. "You nearly died a week ago, and you can't tell me you're already back to normal."

Well, no, but that wasn't the point. So what if he wanted to kill the Joker, so what if he was still pretty sure he'd flinch if he saw the clown in person? Bruce and Dick weren't even really going on patrol so much as they were meeting someone who probably saved his life. And if she'd _wanted_ to hurt him, she'd sure passed up the opportunity of a lifetime.

"I'm fine, Bruce." Jason insisted. And he was. He didn't need a pair of crutches or any kind of brace or anything. He felt fine.

"No, Jason, you aren't." Bruce said, with a voice like steel.

_God damn it_. "I'm benched?" Jason's voice nearly shook with anger. Everything else seemed to—why the hell was this so hard for Bruce to get into his head? He needed to be out there, to show someone that the Joker hadn't been the end of him.

Dick neatly cut across the budding argument before Jason could start shouting. It must have been an I-Was-Raised-By-Batman thing.

"Bruce, he's coming." Dick said, putting his mask on. Jason and Bruce both looked at him. He sighed. "You take him with you or I do. He's not staying at home when you and I both know that the second we're gone, he'll follow."

Bruce gave Dick the Look again, which he ignored. "I don't know about _you_, but I know how _I_ was at his age."

That wasn't fair, since Dick was only six years older than Jason was. But despite feeling slightly insulted, at least Dick's argument seemed to be swaying Bruce. It was the absolute worst one Jason thought he _could_ make, but that didn't really stop it from being true. Jason had been planning to do exactly that, after all.

Still, Bruce seemed to agree.

He walked to the computer and brought up a scanned image of the note. The handwriting slanted to the left, and the way the letters dragged together suggested that the writer was more used to calligraphy or something similar. Given the way Jason had heard her speak, she wasn't used to speaking English to someone who spoke it normally.

Jason rubbed the ring absently, rereading her message and committing it to memory.

_P.S.: Follow the birds._

Bruce said, "She said she's going to be around the Iceberg Lounge."

Jason decided that if that was the signature logical leap Batman was famous for, he never wanted to think like that.

"You think?" Dick said, shaking his head. "She's not exactly the Riddler."

Jason chose that moment to take his repaired uniform out of his locker. There were replacement boots and gloves, and somehow Alfred had managed to get the blood out. Well, Dick probably knew the trick too, since he'd been on his own for a while, but Jason decided not to ask just yet.

Well, time to get changed. There was a locker room nearby for a reason.

"And are you going to be all right?" Dick asked, once Jason was out of sight but not out of earshot.

"I'm fine." Bruce said shortly.

"See, that doesn't work on me." Dick retorted, and Jason could just imagine the second round of arguments. He tried to focus on just getting changed as quickly as possible, but Dick had a weird way of making himself heard everywhere without actually shouting. "We'll get the Joker. He's not getting anywhere near Jason again as long as I'm still around, and that goes the same for you. So what's the real problem?"

"He'll try again." Bruce said, nearly growling even though it wasn't directed at Dick. "And when he does, I'll need someone to hold me back."

Dick said nothing for a moment; a rarity. Then, "Can do."

Jason finished suiting up and joined them a moment later, holding out the white gold ring in his gloved right hand. He asked, as though he had not heard their conversation, "So this is what's been keeping me alive?"

"Not exactly." Bruce said, and he clicked something on the computer to bring up an image of the ring. There was some kind of bar graph blinking on the side of the image, but the thing on the screen was definitely a ring. "I had Zatanna take a look at the ring when you were recovering. It's definitely magic," and as usual Bruce said this with mild distaste, "but not any kind she's familiar with."

That was probably going into the "Suspicious" part of Bruce's mental filing cabinet.

"Regardless, it wouldn't have actually kept you alive if your injuries were fatal." Bruce said gravely. "But since you were in critical condition, it accelerated the natural healing process."

"Oh." Jason said, holding the ring between his thumb and forefinger. "I guess if she's an independent heroine, it'd make sense to cut down on time spent in the hospital. Or just stay out of it entirely."

"But we're not sure if she is." Dick pointed out. "We haven't heard anything from the Titans—and yes, Raven has similar powers, but she would have just told me she was in town afterwards—or the Justice League about any new heroines moving in on Gotham. If Bruce would even let them." That last part was accompanied by a shrug.

"So, we don't actually know what she wants. Aside from this." Jason concluded.

Bruce nodded. "You see why I was worried."

"Yeah, but I'm going _with_ you." Jason said, as though it was obvious.

It wasn't quite accurate to say that there was no way a Robin could get hurt while working side-by-side with Batman, as Dick would be the first to point out (mainly because he had such a record with kidnappings), but so far it sure seemed to work out a lot better for everyone. Except the criminals.

That seemed to be the end of it.

Bruce turned to the elevator where the Batmobile was waiting and said, "Let's move out. Dick, your motorcycle—"

"I know where it is, Bruce." Dick said, and immediately ran off to find his helmet.

"Guess I don't have to call shotgun, huh?" Jason asked no one at all, and followed Bruce to the car.


	3. Interview

**A/N:** So, at this point everyone tries to understand everyone else and fails. Ah well, Rome wasn't built in a day...

Though Dick gets to show off and he and Jason have some bonding moments.

(3/5)

* * *

Miakûl watched the front doors of the Iceberg Lounge, partly because she was interested in the styles people wore when they wanted to look rich, but mostly because she was bored. She would not act out until her rough strategy demanded it, however, and that separated her from her twin. She knew how not to ruin a plan through impatience.

That said, she was still bored. In the twilight, most of the local bird population had gone to roost for the night, except for a pair of crows that seemed determined to steal every scrap of bread she had. She named the larger one Tom, while the smaller one was Harry. Tom and Harry fought over the scraps of bread as she threw them, usually with Tom winning through size.

They were vaguely amusing, but she was perhaps too distracted to actually care about their antics. Eventually, she ended up just flinging the entire bag of bread across the roof, scattering slices everywhere, and watched a few other crows join in.

Then she turned her attention back to the Iceberg Lounge, and spotted the supposedly-stealthy costumed duo approaching even as Tom and Harry cawed about a third human's approach. They scattered, and really there was no way to walk silently on a rooftop covered in artificial gravel, but the interloper did fairly well in attempting.

So, that would likely mean Batman, Robin, and Nightwing. She was not certain if she should feel flattered or annoyed that they considered her such a threat.

Miakûl pulled her mask down over her face and stood, the Shadowcloak sweeping around her to act almost like a pitch-black shroud. Then she turned to face the man on the roof behind her, and noted that from the costume, it had to be Nightwing. None of the rest of the Bat's family wore blue.

He did not draw his paired stick-weapons, and that was enough for her to relax minutely. He had not come to fight, or he would have attacked while her back was turned.

Speaking of having one's back turned, two more sets of footsteps told her that the Bat and his Robin had arrived. That was also encouraging—she had not been certain the boy would breathe properly again, much less take up the role after such a setback.

"Long night?" Nightwing asked, seemingly to distract her and to express interest all at once.

Miakûl nodded, looking to where the Bat and Robin had arrived. Batman fared better than his protégé, who still seemed worn, but the smell of blood was gone and that was acceptable. She looked back at Nightwing, retreating slightly to keep them all in view, and he seemed hale enough. They were all still alive and ready for a fight, which luckily she did not intend to give them.

"It's about time that you give us some answers." Batman said, stepping slightly in front of Robin, and Miakûl supposed that it was a reflex by now. She had no intention of harming the boy in any iteration, but it was difficult to blame the Bat for being protective.

She tilted her head to the side. It was so strange to actually be expected to _speak_ while wearing her mask. Then again, she had spent many iterations of Earth as a non-entity, skirting the edges of even the Bat's surveillance, so perhaps it was not so surprising to be addressed by another person wearing a mask. That said, such a thing had rarely happened in her own world, since those she visited while in uniform tended to be very unhappy to see her. Those confronted by their soon-to-be killer had every right to be upset.

Still, she nodded to the Bat's request, because it was a reasonable one. However, Miakûl made sure to keep all of them within her field of vision, because while she trusted that their intentions were good, she had seen Batman interrogating suspects and witnesses alike. _That_ was a role she was not eager to play.

"Ask whatever you wish." Miakûl said carefully, trying not to give too much of a hint toward either an accent or lack of one. Her brother was much more skilled when it came to hiding them, and she almost wished he was on the rooftop with her, explaining away. But considering her brother's record with meeting new cultures, perhaps it was better this way.

"Who are you?" Robin asked, trying to get out from behind Batman and failing when his mentor insisted on putting his foot down. It was rather amusing.

Miakûl tilted her head again. That was expected, though it would not help the Bat, and she supposed she owed him more information than that. "Would you have me reveal my birth name, or the mask's? The former is useless—the latter, less so."

Batman set his mouth in a grim line and said, "Both."

"Miakûl Bladerunner," she told them easily, straightening from her defensive stance. She pretended not to notice Nightwing's stance shift as well, in anticipation of an attack. "Though you will not find any information on that alone." Primarily, of course, because she did not exist as a human here. She had only been in this Gotham for a little over a week. "When working, I am known more often as Hearthstone."

Not that she carried the identity with her when she walked openly. As she had once been told, the only proper title was one bestowed by one's enemies. She supposed that if the one telling her had not been called the Reaper by his enemies, while being the most inoffensive and apathetic creature she had ever met, Miakûl would not have believed him.

She wondered what it meant when those who had bestowed that name had only meant to find a way to remember that she existed. They would have chosen numbers, had anyone agreed on who was to be the first.

She needed better employers, she decided.

"Working? What exactly does that mean?" Nightwing asked.

Being interrogated by three people at once was an irritating experience. It did not pay to be off-balance for too long, however.

She sighed and flipped the Shadowcloak's hood back to run a hand through her hair. It was not very professional of her, but it was going to be a much longer night than even Nightwing seemed to think.

"Unfortunately, I can only tell you that I am a stealth operative for my employers." Miakûl said, looking for the next rooftop. They were too close to the Iceberg Lounge, and while she did not fear the Penguin as a rule, she worried that others could be listening. It was Gotham, after all. "There is not enough consistency in my mission patterns to give a comprehensive description."

She also had no interest in being hunted down by her employers for being unable to keep a secret, regardless of how far away she was when she told it.

"Also, Hearthstone is a really, really lousy codename, you know that?" Nightwing said. "It's not even a bit intimidating."

She shrugged. "And 'Robin' is?"

"Hey!" said the first and second Robins.

"It is not the name; it is what one does with it." Miakûl said mildly. "I have no doubt that you have all proved as much."

She did not say that she had not, in the first iteration, been able to take any of the costumed fighters seriously. Not even Superman.

Batman approached until she could look upward to meet his lens-covered eyes. "What were you doing in that warehouse?"

Batman always asked the least convenient questions.

"My apologies, but I would prefer to answer that in a more secure location, should you have one." Miakûl said, nodding at the Iceberg Lounge's front entrance. She could overpower Batman, but she was not interested in earning both the Bat's goodwill _and_ his ire in less than two weeks. The Shadowcloak responded to her thoughts, allowing her to draw back into the shadow of the building's rooftop access door far more than should have been possible. "While my name is of little importance, there are some topics that are dangerous as the situation stands."

Batman's eyes seemed to narrow, but that was not her primary concern. "There's a warehouse by the shipyard. Meet us there in thirty minutes."

Miakûl nodded. She could do such a thing, easily.

And then they were swinging off into the night, perhaps to find the Batmobile.

Or at least Batman and Robin were. Nightwing gave her a smirk and crooked a finger, which she interpreted as a challenge. She smirked back underneath her mask, because it was so rare that she received an honest request for any sort of competition, and she did retain some residual fondness for the man's other selves in the other worlds. His behavior here had also been admirable.

Too bad he had a motorcycle, or else she could have won with hardly any effort at all.

Still. _Challenge accepted._

* * *

Jason and Bruce arrived at the specified warehouse ten minutes ahead of schedule, and Jason supposed that Bruce wanted to scout for cameras and witnesses before anyone started talking, but by then Dick and Hearthstone were apparently already there and arguing. Jason figured that Dick likely had scoped the place out first, even if Bruce looked like he was already planning a lecture in his head.

They found the pair standing next to one of the skylights, arguing over who had won the race to the meeting spot. Really, it just figured. Dick hit it off with every woman he'd ever met, except for the ironclad lesbians. He also tended to get along well with most men, come to that, as long as their girlfriends weren't hitting on him.

"You can't honestly expect me to believe that teleporting _isn't_ cheating." Dick was saying, and Jason blinked at that. _What?_ "And flying, and gliding—"

"You were going one hundred miles per hour on the main Gotham speedway," said the voice that belonged to Hearthstone. "You used a truck as a _ramp_."

"Hey, I was going to have _some_ fun with it." Dick said, holding his hands up to wave off the accusation. "But even if we didn't have any actual rules, a race implies actually _crossing_ the distance involved. Not cutting a hole through space-time to take a shortcut."

Hearthstone made a scoffing noise. "Once again, you were using a motorcycle. I do not have a vehicle of any sort. I rather thought the situation warranted it."

"Who won?" Jason asked, trying to cut the argument off before Bruce did.

"It was a draw." Hearthstone said.

"So either we both lost or we both won," added Dick.

Hearthstone seemed to give him an exasperated look, though the mask made it hard to tell. Dick probably would have stuck his tongue out at her if he was about six years younger. Sometimes it was hard to remember that Nightwing was supposed to be in the early stages of Batman-hood, but for Blüdhaven. With any luck, Dick would reach that level of notoriety within the next couple of years, but the other members of Batman's extended family would probably never really take him seriously.

Then Hearthstone turned her attention to Bruce and said, "You wished to know why I was in that warehouse one week ago, yes?" She leaned against the rooftop access, crossing her arms under her cloak.

"Among other things." Bruce said, and the suit's cape seemed to turn him into some kind of towering black apparition that just so happened to have a mouth. "But as long as you start answering, we won't have any problems."

She nodded. "When I travel to this city, I prefer using a single abandoned warehouse as a supply cache, or perhaps a base of operations. The Joker simply chose the same building."

"It couldn't have just been a coincidence." Bruce told her, a frown evident in his voice, and she shrugged.

"Believe what you wish, but I did not know the Joker had taken up residence when I arrived. Had I known, I would have chosen a new location." Hearthstone explained. "I am not fond of him."

Well, wasn't that just the biggest understatement in the history of ever?

"Why didn't you just leave, then?" Jason asked, getting concerned looks from both Dick and Bruce. Yeah, he wasn't about to back down on this one. Hearthstone looked directly at him. "You keep saying you're basically some kind of mercenary—"

"_No_." Hearthstone said sharply, cutting him off before he could really start shouting. "I am no hired sword. I am not _fond_ of the clown, no, enough so that I avoid his lairs and his schemes, but the idea of leaving anyone to die at his hand is repulsive." She stood up straight, but did not approach the any of the members of Bruce's family. "I was given a choice, either to kill him in retribution for your death or to save your life. You know which choice I made as well as I do."

"You were going to kill him?" Dick asked, deliberately drawing Hearthstone's attention away from Jason.

"In hindsight, I was more than capable of doing so," Hearthstone told him, shaking her head. "I needed only to block the door before getting myself and Robin to safety, given that the Joker had trapped the entire building with explosives and already left his men to die."

"I noticed." Bruce said, and clamped one hand on Jason's right shoulder to keep him from starting to shout again. "So where is the Joker now?"

"I wish that I knew." Hearthstone said, annoyed. "It appears that he and the remainder of his men have all vanished, and I lack either the skills or resources to locate his new hiding place." She shrugged. "Ultimately, I do need to return his attentions—it is not every day that a man attempts to murder me without expecting reprisal."

"You know I can't allow that." Bruce said, and Jason wanted to say, "Why not?" The clown was about as far down into Hell that any living person could be, between paralyzing Barbara and trying to kill Jason, and not to mention murdering more people than any non-meta villain on the entire planet.

Wait, she was okay with killing the Joker, and she was capable of saving Jason's life, and she could have done both at the same time if she'd _thought_ about it? That…that meant her first instinct was to help, not harm. For a woman with a mercenary outlook, that spoke volumes.

"I do not plan to kill him." Hearthstone argued, and no one believed her. "Regardless, what other questions do you have for me?"

"What are you planning on doing in this city?" Bruce asked sharply.

"Hopefully, nothing more," she said. "Ideally, there would be little reason for our paths to cross again, and I would spend my stay in this city avoiding trouble." Pause. "Possibly feeding pigeons."

That…was not exactly what Jason had expected. Mostly because, now that he thought about it, he'd never seen Deadshot take time off to feed pigeons. He had a really hard time imagining it, in fact, and he was sure that if the image clicked in his head he'd start laughing.

"How did you teleport halfway here?" Dick asked. When Hearthstone glanced at him, he added, "Hey, you're hardly the first person I've met who can do that. Don't expect to surprise us _that_ much."

"Magic." Hearthstone said bluntly, and moved on.

Dick did not. "Are we talking Doctor Fate or—?"

"I am not nearly so accomplished—the cloak is a gift." Hearthstone said.

"And the ring?" Jason asked.

Hearthstone gave him a long look. "It allows its owner to regenerate from terrible injury, though not as quickly as healing magic. And there are ways to overwhelm even that."

"Why do I get the feeling you _did_?" Dick said sarcastically.

"Because that is precisely what happened." Hearthstone said, shrugging. "The ring cannot heal decapitation, and I was rather attached to my own life, which its owner was threatening."

For a moment, no one said anything.

"Sometimes there are several ways to help the innocent." Hearthstone said distantly. "Sometimes, one can become a healer or a guard. Others, one can kill the dangerous ones so there _is_ no threat." Another shrug. "Either way helps. I was always more skilled with the latter."

That was the second and third time Jason had heard something off about her vocabulary. Though she seemed to know the basics of life in Gotham and more generally in America, some of her vocabulary hadn't caught up with the twenty-first century. "Guard" instead of "police officer." "Healer" instead of "doctor," and "hired sword" instead of "hired gun." He said, "You're not from Earth."

Hearthstone seemed to blink. "Excellent guess."

"Your word choice is off." Jason said, fighting the urge to smirk at having finally caught her off-guard. "Inter-dimensional traveler or extraterrestrial?"

Hearthstone inclined her head to him, like she was acknowledging a point in fencing. He took it as a yes. "It may be simpler to just call me an alien, however. It is no less accurate."

"…Great, it's like living in Metropolis." Dick said, looking amused rather than annoyed.

Hearthstone gave him a Look. Or what was probably a Look. Her mask was less expressive than Bruce's cowl, mostly because no one could see her face. "I hope not to disrupt Gotham half so much."

"You look human." Jason pointed out.

"Superman does as well, and you cannot argue that he is." Hearthstone said. She paused. "Regardless, I am not from this world, which has implications with regards to morality as well as biology."

"Your world was a pre-industrial dimension ruled by magic." Bruce said, and she paused again. "It doesn't matter whether you work for a government or a single individual in your world—it doesn't apply here. You come to Earth, you play by our rules."

"True." Hearthstone allowed. She added, "'Is,' not 'was.' I am not a refugee."

"Then what are you? A tourist?" Dick put in.

Hearthstone said nothing.

"I was _joking_," said Dick.

"Then you and the universe have a similar sense of humor." Hearthstone said.

"So I have to be God." Dick said brightly.

Jason was sure Bruce was getting a headache. He didn't _do_ banter. It made him snappish.

"Should we expect any more arrivals? Threat assessment, numbers, anything." Bruce demanded.

Automatically, everyone adopted a more hostile stance. Hearthstone hated being intimidated—that much was sort of a universal truth—and Dick and Jason hadn't gotten out of the habit of following Bruce's lead. Even if it wrecked the atmosphere of vague cooperation and probably ruined any chances of getting more information. It wasn't like they could hold her off a roof—it tended not to work with metahumans.

Playtime's over.

"What is this, an interview with an immigration official or an interrogation?" Hearthstone snapped. "I will outline the situation as it stands: I saved your Robin's life, I do not know where the Joker has hidden himself no matter how much I wish that was not the case, and I have no intention of interfering in your work as guardian of this city any more than I already have." She paused, thinking, and gave Bruce a Look behind her mask. "And I would like my ring back, Batman, because it does no good to anyone in your belt."

_How did she know that?_ Jason wondered.

"And if you must know, I am the sole representative of my people on this world." Hearthstone said, low and angry. "If it is my choice, none will follow."

There was something about the way she said it that made Jason pause, wondering why that seemed less like a threat than it ought to, but Bruce pulled out the ring and tossed it to her. It vanished into the folds of her cloak.

"This isn't over." Bruce said, more intimidating than Hearthstone due to a combination of height, a deep voice, and mystique.

"It never is." Hearthstone muttered.

Then she was gone, mask fading out of sight.

"Damn it." Dick said.

* * *

If she was being honest with herself, Miakûl would have realized immediately that the Bat's paranoia was perfectly justified within the context of the situation at hand. She was an unknown factor, and the Bat had never been known for being unduly trusting when so many of the unknown factors in the past had turned around and tried to kill him. But she was annoyed with herself for even daring make the assumption at all. Aliens in particular seemed to be a cause for concern, from rogue Kryptonians to yet another strange starfish-shaped creature with one eye and psychic powers.

And looking at it from her own perspective, where until recently she had observed the Earth in flux without ever bothering to consider the people involved, her own conclusions had been just as flawed. She thought of the native humans as _characters_, rather than people with their own wants and flaws, and that was such a _bigoted_ view that she half-expected to see the ghost of her grandfather laughing at her.

Worst of all, she knew she was getting _attached_. When her brother had told her of the fox-spirit guarding a gaggle of humans like a mother bear, all in a world he had stumbled onto, she had dismissed the story out of hand. Spirits were capricious and chaotic—at least in her homeland. There was no way for a powerful, otherworldly creature to view humans as kin.

Her current situation put paid to _that_.

The worst part of it all was that she had never _interacted_ with a single member of the Bat's brood before coming to this iteration of Earth. She observed, like a scribe taking down the minutes in a Council meeting, and found herself being drawn into their struggles emotionally if nothing else. She could put names, or rather identities, to faces, now, and could probably identify every single member of the Bat-Clan even if they did not wear their uniforms.

She _worried_ about them, in a way she never had even when her own brother had run away from home. She had known then that he could survive, deep in her bones. He had all of the same powers and the same skills, combined with a natural disregard for limits. The same was not true for the native humans.

She pulled out her notebook.

It was time to begin a new entry.

* * *

Dick and Jason ran into Hearthstone again on the first patrol of the next night. Like the first time, she wasted time harassing the local wildlife and trying to see if she could goad her favorite crows into fighting by bribing them with bread. Unlike the first time, she was sitting on the edge of the roof of a two-star hotel, and she didn't have either her cloak or her mask. Jason, however, recognized her face, even if this time she had an eye-patch for some reason.

The night was quiet so far—the Joker still hadn't made an appearance, which might have been because Bruce and Dick had managed to scare most of the crooks back under their rocks for a week straight beforehand—and Jason wanted the chance to talk to her without Bruce shutting down the conversation in four seconds.

She looked up as they approached, mainly since the birds chose that moment to scatter. All the stealth training in the world couldn't defeat the sound of new snow being crunched underfoot. "Hello again, Nightwing, Robin. To what do I owe this visit?"

"Nothing much, except Little Bird's ADD." Dick said, and Jason tried to elbow him to make him shut up. Not that it would have worked anyway, even if Dick hadn't dodged, because the acrobat was incapable of shutting up.

Hearthstone made a funny noise and shook her head. Then she said, "The Bat does not know you have chosen to speak to me again, correct?"

"No. He's busy." Jason said. Bruce was following up on a lead for the Joker's location, but he was at home still. Granted, he probably had surveillance cameras everywhere and a police scanner propped up against a mug of coffee, but he wasn't actually out in the field. "So this is where you're staying?"

"Yes." Hearthstone said, and she paused to rub feeling back into her fingers. She was wearing fingerless gloves—black, like everything else she had—and otherwise didn't seem all that bothered by the cold. "You can feel free to tell the Bat as much, if you wish. I imagine he would be interested."

"What he's interested in isn't really the point." Jason said, though he was sure Dick would memorize everything anyway. He might have had his little falling out with Bruce, but he was still the man's son. Sort of, anyway. "I just wanted to ask you something, Hearth."

"Ask away, Little Bird." He was going to kill Dick later for that one, but Hearthstone was at least talking. "I will try to be less abrasive."

"Yeah… Anyway, to start off, why are you wearing an eye-patch?" Jason asked, figuring he'd start off with something simple. "You had two eyes…the other day…and you've had your ring back for a while."

Hearthstone sighed and removed it. Jason didn't have perfect night vision—his code name was Robin, not Owl-Boy or something equally stupid—but he could tell that while her right eye was blue or gray, the left wasn't. "I have what your researchers have called heterochromia—differently-colored irises per eye. My right is teal. The left is gold. I find it easier to explain that I lost my eye in a dreadful accident, rather than explain the color."

"That's stupid." Jason said bluntly.

Hearth blinked. "Pardon?"

"Do you have _any idea_ how many metahumans there are now?" Jason demanded. "After Metropolis and the Man-Of-Spandex, who has _laser beams_ he can shoot from his eyes, I think a funny-colored eye is stupid to worry over."

"Given the circumstances in which we met, you are absolutely correct." Hearthstone said, and Jason was pretty sure he saw her start to smile before catching herself halfway, probably because she'd realized what she'd said.

"Yeah, well." Jason said, and stopped. He tried again. "Wasn't the best time to worry about it, right?"

"That it was not." Hearthstone cleared her throat. "My apologies for bringing it up again."

"It'd be kind of hard to forget." Dick said, and squeezed Jason's shoulder reassuringly. Not that he needed it, but it made Dick feel useful, so Jason didn't say anything about it. "Anyway, what's it like where you're from?"

Hearthstone's mouth quirked into a faint smile. "_Significantly_ warmer."

"It wouldn't be hard to be warmer than Gotham in January." Jason said.

Hearthstone made a noise of agreement. "Perhaps. My home has always been a desert, however. That is rather the opposite extreme." She rubbed her hands together again and blew on her fingers. "I am losing sensation in my extremities again."

"It happens when you don't wear actual winter gear." Jason pointed out. "Why'd you come here if you hate the weather?"

Hearthstone shrugged. "I need something to do when my employers are occupied by other concerns."

"Like what kinds of concerns?" Jason asked, watching her stiffen like someone had just poked her or something. "Really? I mean, I can ask something else."

"The nature of my employers prevents me from giving you a proper answer, Robin." Hearthstone explained unhappily. "Should one of them suffer an untimely death, I would be able to explain in more detail, but that may take decades."

"Well, that sucks." Jason said, but he couldn't find the effort to be all that sympathetic. The smile she gave him after told him that she agreed; it was a stupid situation. She also didn't seem all that worried about a future without bosses. "Got any brothers or sisters?"

Hearthstone shrugged. "An older twin brother. He is a career thief and hired sword."

"Doesn't sound like the apple fell all that far from the tree." Dick said. "Though we haven't heard much about the tree yet."

"Well, considering that our parents are essentially a pirate queen and a bandit king, I suppose not." Hearthstone shrugged again. "I am told that we could have chosen perfectly legitimate lifestyles that would have meant far less hardship, but I am also certain that it is in our blood to go…what is the phrase…'stir-crazy?'"

"It's not like he can really call you on that one." Jason said, indicating Dick with a tilt of his head. When he protested, Jason said, "Okay, really, you wore the pixie boots. And you've set up in Blüdhaven. You are a _something_-junkie at this point. Adrenaline is the least of your problems."

"Says the kid who pisses Two-Face off all the time." Dick said in an undertone. "And _you_ wore the boots, too."

"…I feel as though I am missing some sort of private joke." Hearthstone interrupted after a moment. "What are pixie boots?"

Dick clapped a hand over Jason's mouth before he could say anything else. "Nothing!"

She gave them a skeptical look, and Jason was seriously considering trying to see if he could bite through Dick's Kevlar gloves, but she let it go. "Did you have any other questions or concerns?"

"You said earlier that you weren't going to be bringing anyone else here." Jason said, finally shoving Dick away. "Can you tell us a bit more about that?"

Hearthstone sighed again, glancing at where the crows were starting to come back. "The ability to visit your world is in the hands of two people; me, and a friend." She looked back at them again. "I am well aware of the inherent dangers of this world—primarily those of advanced weaponry and metahumans of various strengths—and likewise aware of the risks in allowing my people anywhere near it." She rolled her eyes. "There would be a war within a week. Too many of my people are shortsighted warmongers."

"Not like I can really judge the human race any different," Jason said contemplatively, "but what's the real problem? I kinda hear Superman's working with aliens more now, and even though he kinda is one, he's also the local rep for 'Truth, Justice, and the American Way' and all its cheesiness."

Hearthstone shook her head. "Most of us are not raised anything like humans. Should you ever get a blood sample from me, or perhaps another, spectacularly lost member of my race, I think you will understand."

"You volunteering?" Dick asked, and Jason kind of expected him to whip a hypodermic needle out of nowhere. Or rather, he might have if Dick's Nightwing identity was some kind of doctor-person, or if Dick actually _was_ a something-other-than-adrenaline junkie. Only he wasn't and he didn't.

She gave a short chuff of laughter. "Not even if you could give me the world and all its wealth, Nightwing."

"Well, no one's going to be able to bribe you with an attitude like _that_." Jason said carelessly.

"Not while I am supposed to be on holiday, no," she agreed. She stood, having finally tired of sitting on the edge of the roof, and began making her way inside. "Thank you for the pleasant conversation, you two. But I am keeping you from making your rounds."

"Next time?" Jason asked, just because Dick was already on the next rooftop. He was a ninja like that.

Hearthstone turned back and gave him a nod. "By the by, you may call me Mia. No one ever does, but it is the thought that counts, yes?"

Jason gave her a quick grin, before pausing as a thought struck him. "Wait, how are you getting money to pay for all this?" He was pretty sure she didn't have an ID card or any normal cash—or at least she wouldn't have had either without stealing them. Bruce had checked to see if she existed in the state records, too, but no luck so far.

"Hustling at billiards." Mia said, and she disappeared into the rooftop door.

Jason shook his head—it wasn't like he could really claim to have done better, back when he was broke and had decided to steal the tires off the Batmobile—and took off after Dick. Still, he would probably mention it to Bruce at some point.


	4. Conspiracy

**A/N:** Part four cometh! And this one features mostly Jason and a bank robbery.

And in case anyone is wondering, I have absolutely no idea what the _exact_ time-frame is for this story. _A Death in the Family_ came out in the late 80s, where _Under the Red Hood_ seems to take place in the 2000s or later, given the tech-ninjas and so on. So if there seems to be some kind of technological/cultural anachronism going on, blame that.

Also, going by the comic timeline, Bane made his debut several years after Jason's death...so he wouldn't really have any idea who the guy was. Our intrepid explorer, however, is starting to get her universes confused.

(4/5)

* * *

**Conspiracy**

Miakûl surveyed the situation at hand and was surprised to find that she did not have an easy comparison to one she had seen before. Curious. She supposed it was a direct consequence of her preference for stealth, and the fact that she rarely walked the same streets or took the same risks as the common humans in her homeland. Come to that, she was not certain that the humans native to Earth routinely traveled via rooftop, either. Either way, though, her normal habits kept her out of range when there were threats on the ground.

It was somehow fitting that the one time she deigned to walk in daylight and on the street, she was embroiled in a tenuous situation.

On the other hand, she was interested to know what it was like to be a hostage in a bank robbery. She did not know what it entailed, and she had enough cheap, artificial foodstuffs to last all day, should it come to that. Particularly if the ones robbing the bank seemed to be working for the Joker.

She _did_ find it slightly insulting that the man holding her upper arm seemed to think that would be enough to restrain her, however. She could stick a knife between his ribs easily, regardless of bullets or shot.

And regardless, she had not even been _in_ the bank at the time. But apparently just being in the general vicinity was enough for the Joker to justify everything.

That, she realized later, was rather emblematic of essentially every villain that had ever come out of or gone into Arkham Asylum.

Miakûl was eventually ordered to huddle along with the others, who were generally trying to make themselves look smaller and accomplished it by curling up on the floor, against the walls. She sat with her back to the wall and her legs folded in a meditation pose and her hands resting on her thighs. She did not cringe when the hostage-takers fired their guns into the ground to intimidate their victims, except perhaps from the noise. It could not have done any good for anyone's hearing.

After a moment, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath to clamp down on her rising temper. While seeing injustice done was a sure way to rile her, she did not have any wish to see people unduly harmed. And if she lost control, such a thing was guaranteed.

"Are you fucking kidding me? You again?" muttered one of her fellow hostages.

Miakûl opened her eyes to identify the owner of the familiar voice and found herself staring directly at the second Robin. Sans uniform and equipment, and thus any method of covertly destroying the offenders.

Actually, the fact that he was sitting across from her in civilian clothes and glowering was almost a good sign. He was, as of yet, unharmed.

"I do not believe we have met properly." Miakûl said slowly, watching the Joker's gang moving around the hostages and demanding various items from the corner of her eye. Thus far, none of them had come to her particular section of the main floor, and if they had, it was not as though she had any communication devices to relinquish. "How have you been?"

Robin realized he made a mistake about half a second before she said anything, and immediately after that, realized that she _knew_. The expression on his face would be amusing for years to come, she thought.

He scooted across the floor to sit next to her instead of against the island in the middle of the room. She would not say it was safer, because it was actually easier for the Joker's allies to see him next to her, but she would be better able to block bullets for him if the situation became untenable. Unorthodox and impromptu experiments had proven that she was relatively resistant to death via gunfire, though she was not eager to see if she could replicate the results.

"How?" Robin asked, green eyes wide.

She supposed he did not wish to draw too much attention to himself by speaking at length. That was acceptable. "That is not important now." Miakûl said in a low voice. "Have you any way to contact help?"

The boy nodded.

"And you have already done so?" Miakûl whispered.

Another nod.

"And do you have some resources at hand?"

Nod.

She relaxed marginally. Good. That would be enough. While the robbers had undoubtedly disabled the more mundane security alarms, it would be nigh-impossible to defeat the Bat's emergency signals, particularly after what had happened not so long ago. The man's caution would be useful once again.

When prompted, she handed the clownish Joker goon her penknife and something that looked like a poorly-made cellular phone, but was actually a disguised protein bar she had bought the other day. It probably made the minion feel useful, at least.

Robin handed over his cellular phone, which Miakûl was certain he no longer needed.

Miakûl found herself wondering if the Joker would actually make an appearance.

"We're in a _Die Hard _movie." Robin muttered, trying to stay inconspicuous.

Miakûl gave him a confused look.

He shook his head. "Never mind."

Eventually, all of the hostages were herded into the conference room on the second floor. Miakûl spent most of her time trying to stay within arm's reach of Robin and examining the marble columns all over the building. She concluded that, eventually, she would find whoever had designed the bank and personally thank him for providing her with so much weaponry. Marble was harder to move than the loose or compacted earth she was used to, but she still had enough power to put a chunk the size of a human fist right through steel plate, regardless.

Though if the Bat was on his way, perhaps she would not need to. It was reassuring, though, and she leaned against a solid column that made up one of the critical structural supports. Robin was nearby, apparently counting down the minutes on his watch.

She _did_ hear the Joker's minions' communication devices crackle as she waited for an opportunity to retaliate, however, and listened in because she did not like to leave anything to chance.

"…the kid's here. Yeah, boss, just like you said, black hair, green eyes, punk attitude." Miakûl narrowed her eyes and focused on the man's voice. "Yeah, we'll get him up there quick…"

Well, it seemed as though her hearing was better than she had thought. And that the situation was correspondingly far worse. It was not every day that one learned that a massive bank heist was a mere smokescreen for attempted murder.

There was no one among the hostages who fit such a description, except for Robin.

_How typical_.

"You asked me how I found out who you were." Miakûl said under her breath as Robin finally gave up on the timekeeping device and strode over to her.

He nodded, drawing close, and Miakûl noted absently that he was several inches shorter than she was. Still young.

She continued quietly, "Let me say this: Wearing a mask only large enough to cover your eyes and cheekbones does not make for a proper disguise."

It was so much simpler to say that than explain the complex way scent, sight, and sound mingled to form a proper picture in her mind. Humans lacked the sensory capacity to make the same distinctions, though there were always ways around any such requirement.

Robin scowled and opened his mouth to protest, but she hissed, "I am not the only one who knows!"

Robin said nothing for a moment. Then, equally quiet, "So the Joker figured it out."

"Yes." _Likely sometime between torturing you and then attempting to kill you the first time. He did not care then, when you were snatched away from Death's jaws by a hair's breadth, but your return to the field has sparked new interest. He will want to know how it was done, and how to correct the oversight._

_And __**this**__ time he will make certain he succeeds._

"And this is a giant cover-up for Round Two." Robin concluded.

"Also correct." Miakûl drew a slow breath. "The man's subordinates do not seem to know thus far." That was luck, and the Joker's arrogance. The men who had seen Robin's near-death were all dead by either her hand or the Joker's, because he could not fathom the idea of letting a member of the Bat's group be killed by another.

It was not a coincidence that the Joker had been the only one to successfully neutralize two separate members of the Bat's entourage.

Robin's eyes slid toward their fellow hostages. "How are we going to keep this many people safe? I don't have enough equipment to take on the Joker's gang in a straight fight." Already assessing the situation, though perhaps lacking in some creativity. Then again, the situation was weighing on them both. "If you can give me a distraction, I can get out of here long enough to get something set up."

"Do not forget that the plan must keep your secret safe even from civilians." Miakûl reminded him, eyes on the door. "To that end, we need to be entirely out of sight." An idea was forming, though she did not have the time or resources for what she would _like_ to do. Improvisation was the name of the game.

He whispered back, "Get me a distraction and I can take care of the rest."

She glanced down. His expression was set and grim, and she was struck by the realization that the second Robin was very nearly a force of nature in that respect. His body would give out before his will, as was the case with his mentor.

Good. But there was still a niggling detail that bothered her.

"How did the Joker realize you would be here?" Miakûl asked quietly.

"Hell if I know." Robin said, scowling. "He could have had goons watching my school for all I know."

"Then I suppose we will have to ask the man himself, should we have the opportunity." Miakûl murmured, watching shadows gather beyond the door. The various employees were arguing with each other and their boss, and she spared a last glance for Robin. "May I take a precaution?"

"What kind?" Robin asked suspiciously.

Miakûl shrank out of sight of the other hostages. Then she drew her power out in a breath, willing it to settle over her form and bend light in an entirely false way that no untrained observer could see through.

"It is only a mirage." Miakûl said in a low voice, knowing that the invisibility effect had to be crafted well enough that the thugs could be fooled. She could still see her own hands—though only through very careful observation of the way light did not quite pass through the space she occupied. It was her illusion, after all. Anyone else would be out of luck. "I am counting on your sense of discipline and your training for this. They will eventually escort you past an area with no monitoring devices, and then we will make our move. Is this clear?"

Her stone sense was not completely reliable in a steel-and-concrete building, even one with so many stone accents, but she was intelligent enough to know how to avoid the basic monitoring devices and fool many other electric machines. It was not her first time tearing through Earth security measures and was unlikely to be the last.

"Crystal." Robin said, turning his attention back to the door.

Miakûl slipped away and used the few free moments they both had to wrestle her temper back under control. She did not want to succumb to her rage now, not when she never had before, and she did not plan to break that successful streak even if the Joker was once again involved.

The best laid plans, however, often went awry.

* * *

By the time the Joker's thugs actually dragged him out of the conference room, Jason was in a very, very bad mood.

God fucking damn it, he'd ducked into a bank for _five seconds_ to get a chance to not be cold for a bit, because it just wasn't Gotham in winter unless the temperature was in the single digits, and then a robbery followed him in. And apparently an elaborate murder attempt disguised to seem like a bank robbery (or double as one; either way). By the Joker and, from the looks of the various crooks around him, someone in a totally different weight class. Killer Croc or, hell, even Ivy.

_Great_.

And to make things even better, because apparently the universe didn't hate him enough, Mia had just so happened to be in the area, and she'd figured out he was Robin. While mocking his domino mask.

"Wonder what the boss wants with this brat," said the one with a scar running from his ear to his nose.

"Ain't it obvious?" said the first one, who had missing teeth—probably courtesy of Bruce in a bad mood—and went on, "This is that kid Wayne took in a couple years back. The boss would have to be crazy to turn down a ransom like that."

_Son of a bitch._ So this whole thing was just because he'd happened to be there—and the Joker's thugs hadn't figured out that he was Robin yet. Hell, the Joker might not have either, but it didn't really matter.

"The boss kinda _is_ crazy," said Scarface.

"In a good way, though, or else this wouldn't work," agreed Orthodontic Accident quickly, as though they expected the Joker had gotten into the security room and was watching them.

Hell, he probably _had_. Thug Two was probably screwed.

Jason twisted in place to glare at Thug Two, and Thug One gave his hair a sharp yank to stop him from doing anything. If he'd been in costume and out of sight of those fucking cameras, he would have just broken the man's nose with a nasty headbutt and then cold-cocked the other one, but that was a Robin thing. While Jason Todd had the reputation of being a tough-as-nails street rat (and being nearly feral by the standards of the Gotham elite), he didn't have one for being strong or skilled enough to take out two fully-grown men.

Besides that, he needed the Joker's eyes off him long enough to get his uniform and equipment out of his backpack—there was no telling who else was checking the cameras—and Mia hadn't taken the opportunity to kick six kinds of shit out of the thugs just yet.

They passed through the lobby on the way to the elevator and Jason was pretty sure he heard Mia ghost past them all. There was a funny fizzling sound, nearly inaudible because the thugs were some of the chattiest he'd ever heard, and he saw a security camera melt into scrap. Neither of the thugs noticed it throwing sparks as it died.

"Hey, you think those rumors are true?" Thug One wondered aloud.

"Which ones?" asked Thug Two.

Thug One made a vague gesture with his free hand and Jason tried not to grind his teeth. What the hell was taking Mia so long? "The ones about Wayne being a fucking creeper. I mean, really, what's he doing taking in two random brats? He's like thirty-something and he sure as hell ain't married, and…"

Somehow, Jason was less than surprised to learn that the Joker's goons read tabloids in their spare time. Still, he couldn't stop himself from snapping, "You both are fucking morons."

One of them grabbed his ear and twisted, prompting a yelp. Again, he had to keep from just lashing out like he ought to have been able to quite a while ago. The worst part was that he _knew_ he'd be able to take them if he could just get his hands on his gadgets.

"Fucking rich kids," said Thug One. "Always with the attitude."

They were close to the elevator and Jason saw another camera melt. This time, he was pretty sure he saw something kinda greenish and liquid hit the lens dead center, and then it started to smoke like the other one.

Then, just as they got to the elevator, one of the thugs had his head smashed against the door as though by an invisible hand—which Jason knew was absolutely true—and just as Mia appeared again with her hand doing the smashing, Jason judo-flipped the other one into the wall. And then kicked him in the head for good measure.

Mia gave his backpack a significant glance and then looked upward, to the ventilation ducts. Jason supposed that he might have been able to get in and move around just fine if he hadn't had a growth spurt when he was thirteen.

"No." Jason said shortly.

She shrugged innocently, only he was pretty sure she'd never been innocent in her whole life. Neither had he, granted, but it still annoyed him.

Jason did his best to ignore her as she stuffed the thugs into the elevator and allowed the doors to close, then tripped one of the safety features by shoving a doorstop into the gap between the wall and the doors. Elevators were easy to disable because of all the safety features built in to keep people from getting stuck for months or whatever, and difficult to override. The only way any of the Joker's thugs would be going up or down a floor would be by using the emergency staircases, and those were easy bottlenecks.

"Are you certain that your message reached any allies?" Mia asked, producing a knife out of nowhere and toying with it between her fingers. _Jesus, she's worse than the Joker_, Jason thought, though he lined up that thought with what he'd been through over the past three weeks and dismissed it almost immediately. The randomly-appearing knives still gave him the creeps, though. "I have seen no sign of the Bat or of Nightwing, much less any police response."

Jason fished through his backpack for his belt. It was at half-capacity—there wasn't much use for canisters of explosive gel while he was in school, at least according to Bruce—but that would just have to be enough. "It's possible that the Joker has a signal-jammer set up somewhere and we just didn't see it. They can be pretty small."

"How so?" Mia asked, and Jason remembered that she might as well have been from the Middle Ages.

"Smaller than my pack. Maybe about as big as a crystal ball or something." Jason said, lifting his backpack again and slinging his utility belt over his shoulder. "I need a place to change."

Mia gave him a strange look. "In the tile room with running water, perhaps? There may be more monitoring devices…"

Well, wasn't that just fucking creepy. Banks put cameras in the bathrooms? "I'd rather use a broom closet." Jason muttered. "Take out the rest of the cameras and we'll meet up in two minutes?"

"Agreed." Mia said, and then she vanished again.

To the apparently-empty air, Jason asked, "How long does that last?"

"Approximately five minutes at the best of times." Mia's voice floated over from near the next visible security camera, which was pointing toward the teller windows. "Unless I attack someone first."

Well, that explained why she'd decided to wait so damn long, then. If he could be invisible until he punched someone in the head, he'd probably put off the actual punching part for a little longer.

* * *

When Robin emerged in his full uniform, Miakûl gave him a calculating look. He was again at full fighting ability, though she was not certain it would be practical to risk his life so soon after nearly losing it. She did not know how the Joker had disarmed him the first time, and did not think it would be best to ask, though she hoped there would not be a second occasion for such a thing. He looked determined, which was a good sign, but it did not change her opinion at all.

"You said there was a way to keep the hostages safe?" Robin asked quietly, and she could see him assessing her as well. She had seen no point in maintaining the invisibility spell once the Joker's henchmen and the monitoring devices had been dealt with, and she would be able to call it again later if necessary.

She nodded and drew the Mask of Wounds from her jacket's inner lining, sitting between her shoulder blades. The thick, padded material had made the curve of the mask all but invisible, and Shadowcloak was neatly folded against the inside. It seemed much smaller than it had been before, though that was as much a trick of magic as just illusion. While it appeared to be as long as the Bat's own cowl when unfurled, the Shadowcloak was not composed of mundane cloth and thus did not have to obey the laws of physics.

Nor was it inanimate.

She shook out the mask and the cloak, letting the material pool on the floor. Robin gave her a strange look, but she ignored it and snapped her fingers.

The blackness surged upward and formed a quadruped shape, as seen through the eyes of a mad artist with little actual skill. It was a spindly jet-black shape and did not quite look like it fit into reality, all jagged edges and jittery movement. It was roughly the size of a great cat, with a tail shaped like a bolt of lightning and all four limbs ending in three black claws. Its head was composed of more shadowy substance on a thick neck and the Mask of Wounds for a face, which had split neatly along its painted red mouth to reveal teeth like an animal trap and a long, red tongue.

The creature drooled and panted like a proper large predator, pacing in a wobbly circle.

"…What the hell is that?" Robin asked, not backing away even though Miakûl could nearly see the thought enter his mind and his spine straightening. She had never known a Bat to show fear openly, and this Robin demonstrated that reputation well.

Miakûl put her hand on its head. It made a cooing noise. "This is Ed. He will be our assistant for this mission." At Robin's increasingly skeptical look, she added, "He is effectively bulletproof and can identify friend and foe."

She did not say that Ed was as much an artificial creation as anything else, because there were only so many ways to explain her oddities. The Shadowcloak itself was not sapient, exactly, because Ed was merely a consciousness that interacted with the cloth on command while otherwise leaving its powers entirely to her. It did not help that Ed was only about as intelligent as a two-year-old human child with a woefully short attention span (if more likely to devour anything he came into contact with) at the best of times.

Robin said flatly, "And you're planning on using _that_ to guard the hostages."

"We will soon be too busy to do so directly." Miakûl said, equally stubborn.

"Why not just kick the hell out of the goons and get it over with?" Robin demanded. "All that's gonna do is cause a panic."

Miakûl's eyes narrowed. "We do not know enough about the situation to risk allowing even that. Ed can bar the door and absorb enough damage to cripple an armored vehicle, and there is no direct access to the outside world from that room. And failing that, he can track stragglers as we assault the upper floors." She waved a hand at the elevator. "Also? The guards are heavily armed and we do not know if the Joker is the only madman involved."

Ed grinned, showing off all of his triangular teeth.

Occasionally, she forgot that most humans were not the Bat. The Bat used fear as a weapon and was nearly immune to another's terror tactics. He was darkness and vengeance, with an ominous motif that was so strongly associated with both the man and Gotham that he would see nothing overwhelmingly frightening about Ed.

Most humans in Gotham were not the Bat, however, and Ed was a terrifying creature despite his innocuous name.

Robin pinched the bridge of his nose, shaking his head. "_You_…you deal with the guards on the second floor. I'll try to punch through the signal jammer."

Miakûl was not satisfied, but she supposed that it did not really matter. Robin was more skilled with the technology of this world than she was, and she was more than skilled enough to tear right through any number of armed opponents. She did not, however, relish the idea of working her way through the building and leaving Robin without backup.

"If you insist." Miakûl said, "Ed will clear the vault as you work. The enemy will be very distracted for some time."

As she turned to go, she heard Robin say, "Wait!" and caught a small device that was thrown at the back of her head. Uncurling her fingers, she saw a small, circular device with a spiraling wire trailing from the end. There was a little black strip of cloth attached to the wire, and a small device on that looked like a microphone. It looked a little like a collar.

"It's a two-way short-wave radio." Robin explained shortly. "Hold the button on the earpiece to talk, let go to listen. Got that?"

Miakûl nodded and put it on. Next to her, Ed drooled.

"I'll tell you when the signal gets out." Robin said, and then he was swinging up toward the ceiling with his cable launcher. She wasn't even sure how he had managed to hide such a tool in his belt—they were unusually small, compared to her brother's own set of pockets—but it seemed to have worked, regardless. She briefly wondered if there would be a better chance of breaching the strange technology from a greater height.

Miakûl blinked for a moment, calculating, then shook her head again and vanished from sight. She and Ed walked to the emergency staircases and while she headed to the second floor, Ed melted away into the floor vents.

* * *

Jason had lied. Technically. And not without a damn good reason.

Mia was fucking crazy. Not like the Joker, but she was definitely not working from the same rulebook as the average person, no matter how friendly she was or wasn't. Normal morality didn't even come into it, and neither did common sense or any kind of interpersonal interaction.

He hadn't really been paying attention before—she'd mostly been wearing her mask and it'd been dark the other three times they'd met—but all of her body language was off. He wasn't some kind of genius at reading people, compared to Bruce (and no one was, anyway), but even he could tell that her reactions weren't quite human. She didn't move much, unless directly talking to someone, and while she'd obviously been around humans a lot and could mostly mimic their reactions, some things just didn't add up.

Actually, when he thought about it, her approach to things like ethics reminded him more of Ra's al Ghul than, say, Catwoman.

Jason wondered at how much she'd been hiding about who and what she was every time they spoke. At least she made it obvious that she was hiding something, but that also meant that as soon as she revealed anything _like_ it was a big secret, anyone talking to her would just assume that _was_ the big thing. Hah. She was worse than Bruce, who played his cards so close to his chest they might as well have not been there.

So, he concluded three things.

One: He really, really needed to get either Dick or Bruce on the line, and fast.

Two: Mia—Hearthstone—was just human enough to be halfway relatable, and just inhuman enough to creep him the fuck out. (This wasn't exactly a new thought, but he figured it was best to put it into a coherent one he'd remember without having to stand next to her.)

Three: The Joker had probably figured out who Robin really was, and _he_ _wasn't alone_.

Jason crouched on the edge of a support beam and looked around the room, looking for any cables Mia had missed on her rampage against security cameras. He needed access to the bank's main server room—phone, internet, whatever—and between his communicator and Bruce's ridiculous number of signal boosters, there wasn't much of a chance that even the best jammer would stand in his way. But first he needed to know where it was.

Well, it was either that or leaving the building to get a better signal, but he was pretty sure people would notice if Robin popped up right outside in broad daylight.

(Maybe. Gotham's citizens could be pretty unobservant and jaded sometimes. Most times.)

He looked up, thinking. If he couldn't get Bruce or Dick on the line, then it would just be him and Mia against the Joker's whole gang and whoever else the clown had managed to con into joining. He figured he could take the Joker, as long as he didn't freeze up, though he'd probably have to use all of his smoke pellets to take on the hired goons if Mia didn't use that invisibility trick on him, too. That still left the unknown partner.

He looked through his belt again, searching for anything new that he might have missed earlier, and found a brand new button in the form of the iconic Robin 'R.'

_Knew it. _There was no way Bruce would have let him leave the manor without some foolproof way to contact him. And since he wasn't sure if the last try had actually worked, Jason activated it.

Then it was time to find that backup info and maybe figure out what was really going on for sure. Speculation was nice, and it'd probably get them pretty far, but facts were more useful and Jason climbed because _someone_ was going to have to find them.

Then the short-wave radio in his ear gave a hiss, and Mia's voice said, "There is a complication."

Jason was about to hold the talking button for his own microphone so he could ask her to stop fucking around and just give him a straight answer, but Mia continued in a low voice, "It is Killer Croc."

_Well, fuck._

* * *

Miakûl caught the moldy, slightly rotted smell of sewer water and reptiles, and immediately had to stifle the urge to sneeze. She had once cleared a number of strange, twisted crocodilians out of the lower waterways of her hometown, and remembered needing to find a place to clear her airways with steam after the deed was done. Killer Croc was no true crocodilian, but she recalled that he kept pets, and the smell was still terrible.

His presence also neatly discounted her earlier theory that the man's mutation made him vulnerable to a state of torpor when the temperature dropped. That warranted another entry into her notebook.

That was somewhat less of a consolation when she faced Croc as a proper adversary. Though she clung to a metal support structure near the ceiling, her invisibility had expired and would not have completely prevented Croc from detecting her in any case.

"I can smell you, little girl!" Croc growled, but Miakûl gave him a dismissive snort and focused instead on the man's minions. They had guns, which were irritating enough, and she reached into her pool of inner power to neutralize them. "Don't you think I can _see_ you?"

She knew that sending Robin that message had been a gamble, but now there was nothing to do but act.

Miakûl scrambled to the other side of the fall beams as the first shorts were fired, trusting her inner sense of balance to keep her steady, and woke the raw, forge-level heat in the metal of her attacker's weapons. It was mostly a way for her power to travel old, well-used lines of power in all things crafted by fire, but the sudden shrieks of pain proved that it was effective.

The guns were red-hot, and the plastic and wood used in their construction was melting or aflame.

Croc roared and grasped the beam, nearly bending it with his inhuman strength. It wobbled dangerously, and the next thing Miakûl knew involved falling through the air, unable to find any stone handholds. Then she did an abrupt half-twist and landed neatly in a crouch.

Later, she would credit a decade's worth of training, but there were more important issues.

She was far too occupied in ducking and dodging around Killer Croc's blows as they came to care about much else. Croc was slow—not much slower than a normal human, granted, and far more powerful should a strike connect, but the comparison was not valid—and she was not at any real risk of dying.

"Stay still, little girl!" Croc snarled and tried to grab her, but she spun out of his reach and gave the still-burning firearms one last burst of heat, melting them into slag. Then she flicked her wrists outward and twp throwing daggers settled into her palms from the bracers hidden up her sleeves.

It never paid to leave any abode unarmed, and she knew more about hiding weapons than most.

Miakûl drew one hand back, holding the knife by the blade, and calculated. She glanced upward from the corner of her eye, only for a moment, and threw. One of the Joker's minions fell screaming, her dagger jutting from a neatly impaled wrist.

Then two egg-like capsules smashed on the marble floors and the entire room was flooded with acrid black smoke. Miakûl covered her mouth and nose with her sleeve and shifted her eyes to detect heat, watching the outlines of six normal adult humans stagger in the gloom. Croc was an outlier as far as scale and temperature went.

Robin—another outlier, being the smallest form in the room aside from her own—landed on a man's head and knocked him to the ground. Then, twisting, he lashed out with a foot and caught another man around the ear and sent him sprawling. The next one caught a birdarang in the face, and the device latched on like some kind of strange creature and shocked him senseless.

Killer Croc moved then, roaring, and nearly caught the edge of Robin's cape though he could not actually _see_ the boy, but Miakûl sprang forward and blocked his path. The smoke wavered around them, dissipating somewhat, and Miakûl chose that moment to flick her left wrist and the knife there extended into a full-length scimitar, which she held directly under Croc's jaw.

She was not as skilled with long blades as her brother, but it was enough.

"I am your opponent." She noticed Croc's smirk widen into a grin and mimicked the expression, though there was only so far any normal human mouth could contort. "Face me."

Miakûl was certain that Robin half-turned to call her a fool, but he was occupied in defeating the last of the Joker's minions and she was the one who had left the smokescreen. She did not fear the Croc at all. She had precious little to fear within the boundaries of Gotham City, other than the wrath of its protector.

"Finally decided to fight?" Croc asked, all teeth.

Miakûl gave a silent nod. At the same time, Robin roundhouse-kicked the last thug in the face, and she shifted her eyesight back to normal vision to concentrate on Croc. She did not need to see the strange mix of reds, yellows, and blues to see him.

"I'll eat you slowly, girly." Killer Croc hissed, taking a step forward in a manner he probably thought was intimidating. Miakûl suppressed the urge to scoff and he went on, "I'll be chewing on your bones long after I get out of this place."

"Forgive me for not being impressed." Miakûl said in a low voice, beginning to stalk around Croc in a cautious circle. She could see him perfectly well, and could anticipate his next move well enough. "Your bestial behavior does you no credit, nor does it earn my regard," she said to his unwavering smile.

She had seen worse. Killed worse.

But she did not want to kill him here and now, in front of Robin. It seemed nearly obscene, oddly. With that thought in mind, Miakûl skirted Killer Croc's range with a few quick steps when he charged. Too slow, far too slow.

Robin chose that moment to whirl around to her side of the room, just as she began to seriously consider the idea of sticking the scimitar up Croc's nose and letting nature take its course. Both of them sprang back from the man's next assault, with Miakûl darting around a support bean and Robin easily scaling it.

Miakûl flicked her right wrist and the other blade extended to match the first.

Robin clicked his tongue and she looked up, briefly. He gestured at Croc's legs, then at his head.

Miakûl nodded and lunged, skidding between Croc's legs in a sliding, black blur, and cut both of the man's hamstrings as she went. Killer Croc howled, falling, and Miakûl rolled out of the way just as Robin's electrified birdarang struck him directly between the eyes. Then Robin followed up with cable-launcher shots that bound Croc's thick arms and torso.

Croc went down, twitching.

Miakûl looked down at the convulsing bulk of Killer Croc and exhaled, shaking her head. Then she let the paired swords in her hands shrink back into knives and tucked them away.

Robin pulled several sets of collapsible handcuffs from his belt and began binding the various minions, including the one who, on reflection, might not actually survive having his arm impaled. She almost relaxed—it felt somewhat like post-battle cleanup, though there were fewer blades and all of them were hers. It still smelled foul, however, due to the slag-heaps that had once been functioning firearms.

"Where's your pet monster?" Robin asked sharply, checking the various restraints one last time. "Well?"

"Ed is scouting." Miakûl replied, checking the strength of Croc's bonds. They would likely hold. Still, she checked again to be certain.

She lacked the instinctive mental bond with Ed that Shadowcloak's creator did, but she could at least maintain a vague sense of where he was and what he was doing. He was at least fifty feet directly below them, probably on the ceiling if he was consistent about it, and in all likelihood completely invisible. While his owner and master might have been able to use his eyes to see distant places, Miakûl lacked any such advantage. As it was, she could pick up a vague impression of patient, if anticipatory, thought.

Miakûl shook her head as though to clear the foreign thoughts away. "He is stalking the enemy, but I cannot tell if he has located the Joker. He is only barely intelligent enough to discern the differences in human faces, and I cannot see what he does."

Robin muttered, "Fucking typical."

Miakûl ignored it. "Let us move on. The Joker will not capture himself."

"He would if you gave him half a reason and a bomb." Robin said under his breath, looking up at the ceiling contemplatively. Miakûl wondered if it was some kind of inherited quirk of the Bat-Clan to always seek out the literal high ground. It certainly seemed to at least be an adaptive trait, no matter how odd.

Miakûl weighed the pros and cons of the situation at hand. There did not seem to be much she could say to that, and in any case the idea of being trapped in a room with the Joker waiting to ambush them was not terribly appealing.

Then Robin's communication device—she did not know he had another, which startled her momentarily—gave a soft beep, which made her reconsider the idea of talking.

"Robin," the boy said, holding his gloved hand to the device in his ear. "Yeah, we're in. Me and Hearthstone." Pause. "Not yet." Another, longer pause. "Killer Croc is down. Not sure."

Miakûl was just about to ask who was speaking to him through his earpiece when there was a terrible shriek from the lower floors, and Ed sent her a sense of alarm followed by hostility directed outward.

"The Joker has been located." Miakûl interrupted, in case Robin insisted on ignoring Ed's warning. She retrieved another knife from her pockets, not looking at him. She was still having some difficulty with actually deciding what to do upon encountering the Joker in the flesh, though she was seriously considering not killing him at this point. Her current companion was still likely to disapprove of her new plan, however. "Near what may be the vault, I believe?"

Robin gave her a sharp look, but he did not speak to her. "Check for life signs in the basement."

The communication device cut off. Robin lowered his arm and did nothing for a moment, taking a deep breath to steady himself. After a moment of silence, broken only by the groans of the men they had defeated, he gave her a determined look.

When he said, "Let's go," she followed.

Or at least tried to, because there was a low, terrible sound and then it was as though a giant's hand flattened them both. Ears ringing and nose streaming blood, Miakûl managed to maintain the presence of mind to block Robin from _someone's_ line of sight, though she did not know who just yet. Given the state of the wall and the dust and the noise, there had been an explosion of some sort that dwarfed many she had seen within a roofed building.

She blinked rapidly, and through the dust she could see the heat outlines of a dozen men, all armed by their stance.

"Honey, I'm home! Did you miss me?"

And the Joker.

Miakûl made a mental note to find Ed at some point and strangle him.


	5. Endings

**A/N:** Unsurprisingly, the Joker ends up with 90% of the dialogue in this one. What can I say? It's the Joker. On the other hand, Jason has 80% of the narration, so maybe it all evens out.

If you notice loose ends, they were put there on purpose.

(5+epilogue/5)

* * *

**Endings**

Jason didn't know quite what to think when Mia practically knocked him over, though angry responses were at the forefront of his mind. Then his brain caught up with events and he was pretty sure he could hear the Joker's voice. But that didn't make any sense unless Mia had fucked up somehow and her little monster friend actually sucked at identifying people by their faces.

Now that he thought about it, that part made the most sense of anything that had happened today. He generally knew where he stood with people and not situations.

They had about two seconds of dust-cover left, the Joker was in the goddamn room, Mia was bleeding from her nose and ears, and Jason was all out of smoke bombs. If there was more time, he'd have something pretty colorful to say about life, the universe, and how everything seemed to have it out for anyone who worked with Batman, but there wasn't and he didn't.

Mia got to her feet at the same time as he did, not showing any of the unsteadiness Jason associated with people with blown eardrums. There was still blood running down her face and frankly, he was pretty sure they were outgunned, but Jason was just as if not more determined to figure out what had just happened and possibly maul someone over it.

The smoke cleared, revealing not just the Joker but also what seemed like the entire remainder of his gang after Jason and Mia had taken out the ones on the second floor. Every last one of them had a semi-automatic rifle or a Tommy gun or something with similar firepower, and they all had that signature Joker-like face paint that marked them as a rank-and-file crony. But he was focused mainly on the clown in the lead and the Joker returned the favor.

The Joker's grin seemed to widen. "How's the spine, Boy Blunder?" He glanced upward, scanning the rafters. "Which one are we on now, Batsy? It's just _so_ hard to keep track of them all…"

Fucking pointless. Bruce wasn't around—or if he was, he sure as fuck wasn't going to just be hanging around on the ceiling. That was for nighttime entrances and usually included tear gas.

Mia seemed to frown slightly, dabbing at her nose and ears with her sleeves.

"Aw, no Batsy today? That's too bad. Guess it's just you and me then, kid." The Joker laughed, sending a chill down Jason's spine. It was stupid, but that laugh was making him freeze up like he was a Vietnam vet in a war movie showing. His hand twitched toward his utility belt for a batarang, but not much else.

Then the Joker paused, reddened eyes actually taking in Mia's presence for the first time. "Why hel_lo_ there." The Joker's grin widened more, impossibly, and he sidled closer to her. "Who might _you_ be, pretty lady?"

The Joker sidled over, and as much as Jason wanted to jump and pound his face in or something, he had to remember the guns and the fact that Mia was deliberately waving him off, signaling hand behind her back so that only he could see. His Robin uniform wasn't bulletproof or fireproof and it didn't give him any real resistance to being torn to bits by bad guys. So he backed away, trying to keep as far away from the Joker as he could while still being within striking distance if Mia needed it. It still felt like cowardice, but his brain was telling him to run in two different directions and that wasn't helpful.

It still didn't stop him from twitching the slightest bit when the Joker draped an arm over Mia's shoulders and leaned in like she was some two-dollar hooker.

Dick and Bruce were so fucking late he was going to shout them both deaf when he got home. If. He tried not to think about that part. Last time he'd run into the Joker, it'd been pretty close to _if_.

The Joker grinned and stage-whispered to his goons, arm still around Mia (who was making Jason wonder if her brain had gone out to lunch). "Turns out the Boy Blunder can get a girl! Who knew?" He followed up with that signature Joker laugh, which set Jason's teeth on edge even worse than before.

The goons laughed, because anyone who didn't laugh along with the Joker was usually the first one to get shot. Jason let a slow breath out through his nose.

Then one of the Joker's men said, "Huh. Boss, why don't you have one like that?"

It was amazing how humor could die out the minute someone saw the writing on the wall. The rest of the goons lapsed into nervous silence and the Joker looked at them. He raised an eyebrow and waved a hand at the only one dumb enough to comment. The rest of them raised their weapons.

The body stopped twitching eventually.

The Joker ignored it. "As I was _saying_…" He leaned in, then paused. There was something strange in Mia's gaze, even to him.

Mia stared back without even blinking. Instead, she brought her hands up slowly in front of her and cracked her knuckles with an audible pop. Behind her, Jason finally got his trembling fingers to obey under his cape and had batarangs in both hands.

"Ah, one of _those_ broads." The Joker backed away slightly and waved a hand dismissively. He turned his attention back to Jason, feeling a little like he imagined Superman's heat vision to be, and laughed again. "Really, you're a sight for sore eyes, Boy Blunder—or is that just how you feel?—ah, doesn't matter. Boys?" He waved a dismissive hand.

Then there was a sound like bacon sizzling and all of the Joker's men let out simultaneous screams. Jason heard the guns drop and the metallic popping sounds that signaled cooling metal, and the Joker whirled around to see what had happened.

_I _know_ I saw this fucking happen five minutes ago and it still doesn't make any fucking sense._ Okay, so no, he hadn't exactly _seen_ Mia do something to the goons' guns when Killer Croc was all they had to worry about in the here and now, but he figured it had to be her because she was the only common denominator both times everyone had ended up disarmed via their guns nearly catching fire. And even if he had no idea how it'd happened, it wasn't like he'd complain about not having to be shot at.

Or about the Joker being caught off-guard.

Because after what had already happened (and Jason doubted the feeling of trying to think through a fog was a remnant of the concussion he'd gotten last time), he'd take any measure of control back.

"What's wrong with you lunkheads?" the Joker demanded, and Mia snapped her fingers. The guns, which some of the more loyal or fearful of the Joker's gang had started to reach for in order to put off their boss's wrath, outright caught fire.

Jason saw the ones who hadn't gotten the worst of the burns reach for knives instead, and flung a batarang at them both. Then the ones with the least-burned hands had the most cuts instead. That evened the odds a bit, even though the Joker was probably packing _something_ in that eyesore of a purple suit, and Jason decided that he could power through whatever was slowing him down. Even if it was in his head.

The Joker backed away still further, retreating because he seemed to have made the same connection that Jason had between Mia and shit randomly getting red-hot. "You don't need to be like that. That's not exactly playing fair."

Mia took a step forward anyway, but it was a weird little half-movement that somehow got her where she was going without actually looking like she'd traveled the space between two points. One second she was barely five feet away from Jason, then she was just ten from the still-retreating Joker.

The Joker jolted—the man moved like a fucking spider when he wanted to— and shouted, "Get them!" to the goons that were still listening. He gave them both a wicked grin that made Jason's brain momentarily freeze (_oh fuck this better not be a fucking flashback I don't need this right now_), because apparently the Joker just couldn't resist one last shot at Jason before someone beat the living shit out of him.

Mia whirled instead of chasing after the clown, retreating to fight at Jason's side. He knew why, even if she really ought to have just punched the Joker's lights out and saved everyone some trouble. Then again, it wasn't like Jason wouldn't like a shot at the Joker later. For now, it was down to them and the goons. Jason fought a grin. He could _do_ this.

Once upon a time, he'd been mockingly asked if his special power was that he was too stupid to give up.

The answer was still the same. _Maybe it __**is**__._

Mia moved with him, guarding his back as they fought their way through the crowd. They were both acrobatic fighters compared to the Joker's little mob, like usual. Jason knew for a fact that Dick was like a fucking rubber ball and gravity seemed like an optional extra where he was concerned. Bruce didn't really need any fancy flips, since he could punch out basically everyone who wasn't a meta. Jason couldn't really do either, so he was probably the "scrappy" one.

Knowing every dirty trick in the book helped, as did having a bunch of Wayne Enterprises goodies that did everything from release pepper spray to zap people. He didn't have a lot of those left, but he knew how to use them.

For her part, Mia never seemed to mind when he vaulted off her to kick some guy in the head, even though one time he had to put his foot in her back and threw himself feet-first at the target. She also had no problem weaving around or over him in order to get fling a knife into someone's hand.

It was almost like working with a kinda-homicidal version of Dick. With zero sense of humor. So maybe it wasn't a decent comparison.

Mia kicked somebody in the head and when she put her foot down, she used the momentum to judo-flip another goon into Jason's swinging fist. Two more batarangs tripped up three goons when they tried to run and they crashed face-first into the wall. Jason snap-kicked one man in the kneecap and felt the joint snap, whirled on the spot to punch another guy in the jaw like he'd seen Bruce do a hundred times, and still got to watch when Mia stabbed two different guys in the foot simultaneously.

Yeah, homicidal version of Dick.

Jason kicked a thug in the groin and brought his clenched fists down on the man's bowed head to send him senseless to the ground. Mia dropped another unconscious body on top of the man he'd just flattened, immediately turning so that Jason could guard her back and she could guard his.

Funny, how well they worked together. Jason figured they were both well-trained enough not to choke when there was a dance partner available. That was half the fun of being a costumed superhero, wasn't it?

Barely two minutes later, all of the thugs were down for the count.

That just left the Joker. When Jason tried to move past Mia to get his hands on the clown while he was distracted by panicking, though, the woman altered her stance to block him. She didn't glance back, but the way she moved made it clear that she was trying to keep him and the Joker separated.

Jason managed to force his way forward to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with her anyway. The Joker didn't really have any place to run that they couldn't catch him running for.

"Do you not recognize me, Joker?" she asked.

The Joker gave a slightly uneasy laugh, but he wasn't smiling. "Honey, I'm _sure_ I would have remembered you."

Mia smiled faintly. It was more than she'd done since that time on the roof. Then, like some kind of revenge of the drainage system, black liquid _something_ started to surge out of the floor vents. It seemed to crawl up her legs—Jason thought he recognized a spindly limb and immediately thought of that black monster she'd created earlier—and eventually formed a cowl made of that weird, semi-solid substance that looked as black as deep space. Then her mask—the same one that had been that monster's face—seemed to snap into place.

Her voice was slightly muffled, but there was an undertone of menace that remained perfectly audible. "Remember me now?"

The Joker's grin suddenly reappeared. "Oh yeah, I remember you." Another one of those jerky spider-like movements and the Joker was holding a gun in Mia's face. Except it wasn't really in Mia's face, not really, but while Jason might not have been Dick fucking Grayson, he knew how to get out of the way of a gun. The Joker just couldn't resist having the last laugh.

At least, he did when his brain wasn't frozen because _hello flashback_.

_blood in his lungs, had to be blood, fucking hell it hurt to breathe and move and __**exist**__. God fucking dammit why couldn't he get up and move and fight and damned if he was going to die like this, like a rat in a trap when there wasn't anyone coming and all he could see was red_

Mia shoved her way forward and spread her arms so she could take the bullet but Jason hardly even knew what was going on. In the same instant, the Joker fired.

**_CRACK_**.

Nothing. Jason felt like the world had slowed to a crawl, and he stared blankly at the little yellow flag sticking out of the end of the Joker's last gun.

_What just…_

"Whoops! Left the wrong gun at home!" the Joker said with a chuckle, waving the gag weapon around and making the little "Bang!" flag wave.

Mia snarled wordlessly—zero sense of humor, fucking _called_ it—and made a half-charge toward the Joker before remembering that Jason was still there and pausing, hesitating. _Fucking hell, woman, don't stop killing him just because I'm here._

The Joker leveled the weapon again with a grin Jason had last seen while dying. He fired it again, and there must have been something funny about the gun and the flag (of course there was, _it was the fucking Joker_) because the next thing he knew Mia had caught something less than an inch from his chest and it was about as thick as a pencil and made of metal.

No one did anything for a second.

Then Mia opened her hand to reveal the flag, or what was left of it. She'd caught the harpoon thing. She'd caught it an inch from the center of Jason's chest and knowing what he did about the Joker's toys, he didn't doubt that the shot would have been fatal one way or another. Mainly because it seemed to have grown nasty little spikes since Mia had caught it, stabbing her fingers and palm in a dozen places. Blood dripped from her hand, but it was the hand with the magic ring and Jason could already see it healing.

She idly yanked the projectile free and flung it across the room. It struck a wall hard enough that it vibrated, having landed point-first in the drywall.

Something in the Joker's face shifted. What was there now was naked fear, because he turned with hardly a customary giggle and a quick "Love to stay and chat, but—" before immediately running back through the hole his goons had made.

Mia ignored the Joker entirely in favor of rounding on Jason and checking him over for injuries. There was a cut on his arm and a bruise forming on his face, both of which he could actually sort of feel now that the adrenaline had started wearing off. After about a quarter of a second, she pulled a strip of cloth—probably a scarf or something—and tied it around the superficial injury.

(Or maybe not so superficial—it was still bleeding and he couldn't remember where he'd picked it up.)

"He's getting away!" Jason said, and it was probably the first thing he'd _really_ felt the need to say since Barbara had broken through the signal jamming and finally gotten his communicator working.

Mia shook her head. "He will not."

Two seconds later, there was the sound of a fist meeting flesh and the Joker stumbled back into the room, tripping over the rubble. He was followed in by none other than Bruce, who was in such a bad mood that the Joker got an uppercut that sent him halfway across the room before he could so much as quip. Dick dashed in almost on Bruce's heels, and Jason was pretty sure he saw just a hint of lipstick on the former Robin's cheek.

(Dick had no right to lecture about Jason going on dates ever again. Not that he ever did, but Jason planned on remembering just in case.)

And while Bruce was pounding the Joker's face in, like usual, Dick immediately made a beeline for where, finally, Jason's legs had turned to jelly and Mia was carefully lowering him to the floor.

"Hey, Robin. You miss us?" Dick said, and his near-permanent smile was wavering. Hah, so Dickie Bird wasn't great at the whole "brave front" thing either. Funny, but it was still shitty timing.

"I guess." Jason said, throwing a smirk back. "Get the hostages out?"

Dick gave an actual grin. "Yeah, I did. Sorry it took so long. You know how traffic is."

Jason and Dick exchanged a look that was pretty much universal, despite the masks. The world was back to making sense. As much as it ever did, anyway.

"Robin, status report." Dick said, slipping into the Nightwing voice as Jason started to realize that yeah, there were cops in the building. That meant witnesses. Maybe even Commissioner Gordon, who meant well enough, but Jason was convinced didn't like him much. _Great_.

"Yeah, gimme a sec." He waved Mia off and stood using a nearby upturned desk as support. Well, he was effectively sitting on it, but that was a technicality. Mia obligingly wandered over to where Bruce was restraining all of the barely-conscious thugs and the Joker himself with handcuffs, apparently to either retrieve all of her knives or help Bruce out. It wasn't like he needed it, though.

Speaking of, Killer Croc was still twitching on the floor, against one of the walls. They'd probably have to get someone to haul his ass off to Arkham again. Nobody else seemed to have the facilities to hold someone like Croc, except maybe SeaWorld.

Jason gave both Croc and the Joker one last look, then shrugged to himself and decided to just leave it to Bruce and Dick, or maybe even the cops.

"Okay, so I might have a few cuts and bruises and I don't completely remember where I got all of them, but that's not the really important part." Jason began, pinching Dick's gloved hand when he tried to get a look at the cut Mia had sort of bandaged. No touchie. "I got here about half an hour ago…"

* * *

"_So_ nice of you to finally join us," the Joker wheezed as Miakûl finally made her way to him and the Bat. "And after using Batsy as your punch-line, too. Ha!"

The Joker was bound alongside all of his foolish minions, leaving Miakûl with little to do other than retrieve her weapons from their bodies. She knew how to aim for nonlethal areas, though even that was risky—it was far easier to simply kill an opponent than risk missing entirely while trying to merely disable them.

Miakûl was also not certain why the Bat had not chosen to break more of the Joker's teeth.

The Bat did not seem happy with her presence, but he never seemed happy, so Miakûl ignored his apparent disapproval. "You have attacked me with the intent to kill on two separate occasions now. I would ask why, but I suspect the answer would be along the lines of 'for laughs.'"

"Guilty as charged, baby." It was truly astounding how the Joker managed to be so arrogant even while beaten and bloody on the floor. Miakûl also suspected that if anyone were to open the Joker's head after his probable fortunate demise, they would find little to relate it to the rest of the native humans' brain structures. "Oh Batsy, I thought you had a fling with Tall, Dark, and Stabby's little jewel? Tut-tut! Naughty little bat!" The Joker cackled. "Aren't I enough?"

Miakûl tilted her head. While she was sure that the Joker's unrelenting barbs were annoying Batman and would also annoy both Nightwing and Robin, she had larger concerns. It would not suit her purposes if the Bat killed the Joker. She also highly doubted it would suit his sanity any.

Miakûl cleared her throat to draw the Joker's attention back to her. Not that she intended to do anything useful with it, but she supposed that she could at least sharpen her tongue on him. It would be practice for the next time she got into a verbal spat with her twin. Though that would probably also annoy the Bat.

There was also the option of ending the Joker's threat as permanently as she could, without lethality. Such a pity that the Earth let such creatures live, but it was hardly as though her own world could claim to have any lesser number of maniacs.

It was a stark choice. Perhaps it would be best to seek advice. "If I could speak to you alone, Batman? I have some concerns."

Reluctantly, Batman followed Miakûl to a slightly less open part of the room. "Make it quick, Hearthstone."

"The Joker will not be able to skitter away with both of your apprentices and the entirety of the Gotham police department waiting in the wings," she replied. She glanced back anyway, though, just to be sure. She would have to remember to break the Joker's leg if her request was refused. "I merely wish to know a few things, which I am sure you have already determined."

"Speak up, then." Batman said. He did not sound as hostile.

Miakûl tilted her head in a silent question.

"You were an asset today." Batman said calmly.

"Ah." There was not much to say to that. It was high praise, coming from one who had no reason to trust her or her origins. "Regardless. I must ask what you plan to do with the Joker."

"The Joker goes back to Arkham." It sounded like an argument the Bat was not eager to repeat. For some reason, she imagined that the second Robin would be the most vocal about the Joker's consistent return to a facility that had so far failed to hold him. It also sounded like something that even the Bat was not happy about.

"…I see." Miakûl murmured, displeased. She did not like the idea of the Joker being allowed free reign in such a place, but it was not her decision. "And what shall you do for Robin?"

She had not been under the full force of the Bat's glare before. And yet she did not fear him any more than she did the Joker. They were human. "That's none of your concern."

"He froze." Miakûl said sharply. Unpleasant truth it may have been, but the Bat needed to hear this. Perhaps not from her, but no one else seemed to have noticed and had the inclination to correct Batman. "I do not know the mind-healing techniques favored by your people, but as long as he remains Robin he remains your responsibility, and helping him through an experience such as the events of the last fortnight are a part of it."

"I don't need you to lecture me on how to take care of my partner." Batman said in a low, dangerous voice.

Miakûl had faced more dangerous attitudes waking up late for a mission. "I am _reminding_ you." She let loose a frustrated breath. "I apologize for interfering, but the happiness of your charge is more important than our mutual difficulties and my disregard of human life."

Batman said nothing for a long moment. "There aren't any therapists for costumed heroes. Confidentiality doesn't mean anything." Something in his face twitched. "I've seen my share over the years, of all types."

She got the strong impression that she was missing a large part of the puzzle, but Miakûl just shrugged. "I cannot advise you on the specifics. But I have seen my own share of…problems."

Her brother's friends alone could fill several lengthy tomes with nothing but their experiences and failure to cope with them. The section on life-threatening experiences could fill two on their own.

Batman gave her a long look. "You care about what happens to Robin."

Miakûl answered instantly, "I do." Then she thought about it, and how the remark could be interpreted, and went on evenly, "It is very hard not to become protective of a young hero. One always wants to see how great they could be, if they manage to grow up." She smiled fondly beneath her mask. "I think your Robin could be as much of a force for good as you are."

"Good. Hang onto that thought." Batman said, brusque but obviously in less of a bad mood, and turned back to the Joker. "I will be."

After the Bat punched the Joker in the head to stun him, they both eventually made their way to Robin and Nightwing. Miakûl made certain to take the once-flag from the wall and tuck it into her clothes for later, recalling that she had bled on it and wishing to leave as little trace of her passage behind as she could manage. It was simply a matter of retrieving all of her weaponry and folding them back into her bracers' enchantment, and she was not terribly worried as far as the native humans' law enforcement went. She could avoid them or attack with equal ease, though she planned more on the former.

"Better get going." Robin said, and Miakûl thought that he was putting up a façade of normalcy. It would make sense, given what she knew of his nature, and she did not begrudge him that. It always felt safer to take refuge in normality.

Miakûl nodded, already thinking of the inn room she had rented. It was safe enough, but there were also a few things she needed to cover.

"Batman." Miakûl said, voice low and inaudible to those outside of their impromptu circle. "There is one other item of concern."

Batman said nothing, but she could read his expectant stance.

"The Joker has learned to recognize Robin's civilian guise, as have I." Miakûl didn't even need to see the Bat's expression shift into a severe scowl before she went on rapidly, to all three of the Bat-Clan, "I cannot put a name to a face, but the Joker may have done so."

Nothing was said after that about the Joker, but Miakûl knew how to sense tension. The highest priority was in leaving the banking building far behind. To that end, Batman knocked a window out of its frame and they all followed him in scaling the building. The sun had gone down and the sky was shrouded by snow-laden clouds. It was possibly Miakûl's least favorite weather, but it was also not an option to head back inside and pretend to be one of the hostages.

Miakûl looked out over the edge of the building—it seemed to have ten stories total—and sighed. It was nearly dark enough to simply travel back to the rented room. Then it would be warm and she could sleep off the events of the day. Nightwing was already gone by the time she made it to the top, and she did not think much on the exact mechanics of his exit.

Batman and Robin remained on the roof, and she thought she saw Robin shuffle awkwardly, as though trying to decide what to say before they inevitably left to make new plans with the information provided by the day's events.

"Hey, you coming with or heading back to your crappy motel?" Robin asked, startling her out of her thoughts with the question.

"I…had planned on the latter." Miakûl said, surprised.

Robin glanced back for a moment, gauging the Bat's approval or disapproval. Apparently seeing something that Miakûl did not, he went on, "Well, your hotel's a complete waste of money and you should come with us."

It was not as though she could exactly argue that point. "To?"

"Home." Robin said, smirking faintly. "Where else?"

Miakûl did nothing for a long moment, simply staring at the boy and his mentor. Then she gave a slow nod, thankful that her mask hid her expression completely. It would not be proper to show her emotions so openly. Rage was easy, useful. Happiness was neither.

"Just make sure you don't have anything to do first." Batman asked, voice low and even. "It might take a while."

She thought about it. The Bat could not possibly know her habits, beyond what she actually allowed him and his entourage to see. She had not been in this world long…enough… She thought again, calculating sunrises and sunsets and all the events in between. She even retrieved her notebook from a hidden pocket to check her work and refresh her memory, heedless of Robin's quiet, curious exhalation. She needed to be _certain_.

Had it _already_ been three weeks? That…was not good. Not good at all.

She only had a day left. Perhaps less, before the call went out.

She gave a quick bow, already regretting the lost time. "My apologies, but I will not be able to accept your invitation. I have somewhere I must be within the next few hours."

"Back to the slave-drivers?" Robin asked. He looked disappointed, too. _How strange_. It was not as though she had become a valued friend, was it? "Tch. You don't even know who we are yet."

To that, Miakûl had only one thing to say. "I know that you are Robin." She nodded at Batman. "And that he is Batman. For now, that will have to suffice." She bowed again. "Another time, perhaps."

Then she leapt off the roof and into the embrace of the night.

* * *

**EPILOGUE**

_Three years later…_

"You still shouldn't have hotwired the car."

"Hey, do you see the old man letting me take this thing on patrol any other way?"

"No, but—"

"Then just leave it to me. I've done worse. 'Sides, what's a little teenage rebellion after Dickie Bird?"

"I'm not even supposed to be going on patrol without him."

"Gotta earn your wings somehow, kid."

"Or wheels?"

"Those, too."

"Didn't you say you found the Batmobile as a kid and—?"

"Was stealing the tires off it, yeah. No big deal."

"Well—"

**_WHAM_**.

"Fucking hell!"

"Pull over! Pull over!"

"I am! I…Jesus. Is that…?"

"You know who she is?"

**To be continued…**

**END OF ACT ONE**


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